How Fra Angelico and Signorelli Saw The End of The World

How Fra Angelico & Signorelli Saw the
End of the p World

Crei ghton Gi lbert
How Fra Angelico and Signorelli Saw the End of the World
Gilbert.FrontMatter 10/23/02 3:07 PM Page i
Gilbert.FrontMatter 10/23/02 3:07 PM Page ii
How FraAngelico andSignorelli Saw
the End of the World
The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, Pennsylvania
Crei ghton e. Gi lbert
p
Gilbert.FrontMatter 10/23/02 3:07 PM Page iii
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gilbert, Creighton E.
How Fra Angelico and Signorelli saw the end of the world /
Creighton E. Gilbert
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isnx 0-271-02140-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Signorelli, Luca, 1441?1523. End of the world. 2. Signorelli,
Luca, 1441?1523Criticism and interpretation. 3. Angelico,
fra, ca. 14001455Criticism and interpretation. 4. Mural
painting and decoration, RenaissanceItalyOrvieto.
5. Judgment Day in art. 6. Cappella della Madonna di San Brizio
(Duomo di Orvieto) I. Signorelli, Luca, 1441?1523. II. Title.
xi623.S5 A66 2001
759.5'09'024dc21 2001021479
Copyright 2003 +nr rrxxs.iv:xi: s+:+r uxivrrsi+.
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press,
University Park, PA 16802-1003
rrox+isrircr: Benozzo Gozzoli, Portrait of a Friari, drawing.
Chantilly, Muse Cond, recto
It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to
use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum
requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481992.
Gilbert.FrontMatter 10/23/02 3:07 PM Page iv
Disclaimer:
Some images in the original version of this book are not
available for inclusion in the eBook.
to
James Ackerman and Craig Smyth
and in memory of
H. W. Janson
for help proffered when it signified
p
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cox+ r x+ s
List of Illustrations ix
Introduction xi
cn:r+rr oxr
The Place as a Precondition 1
cn:r+rr +vo
Planning the Frescoes 23
cn:r+rr +nrrr
Intermission, 14481499 61
cn:r+rr rour
Signorelli Paints the Inner Bay 71
cn:r+rr ri vr
The Imagery of the Outer Bay 117
Envoi 157
Notes 161
Bibliography 189
Index 195
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i i s + or i i ius + r:+ i oxs
Unless otherwise noted, location of the works below is the Cappella Nuova of Orvieto Cathedral
in Orvieto, Italy, and the work is by Luca Signorelli.
ri t. 1 The Damned (detail of central area of Fig. 45)
ri t. : Reliquary of the Corporal, Orvieto Cathe-
dral, Cappella del Corporale
ri t. Orvieto Cathedral, general view. Copyright
Alinari / Art Resource, New York
ri t. Orvieto Cathedral, plan as of 1450
ri t. Orvieto Cathedral, plan showing original
curved apse and additions, to 1450
ri t. o Orvieto Cathedral, faade. Copyright Alinari /
Art Resource, New York
ri t. ; Pier with reliefs of antetypes of Christ,
Orvieto Cathedral faade
ri t. Detail of Fig. 7, lower left section
ri t. , View into the Cappella Nuova
ri t. +o Giotto, Last Judgment. Padua, Arena Chapel
ri t. ++ Fra Angelico, Last Judgment. Florence, Museo
di San Marco
ri t. +: Fra Angelico and Signorelli, Vault of
Cappella Nuova
ri t. + Fra Angelico, Prophets (detail of Fig. 12)
ri t. + Fra Angelico, Last Judgment. Berlin,
Gemldegalerie
ri t. + Barna, Christs Entry into Jerusalem, left half.
San Gimignano, Collegiata
ri t. +o Barna, Christs Entry into Jerusalem, right half.
San Gimignano, Collegiata
ri t. +; Fra Filippo Lippi, Martyrdom of the Baptist,
detail of left corner. Prato, Cathedral
ri t. + Benozzo Gozzoli, Sheet of drawings.
Chantilly, Muse Cond, verso
ri t. +, Fra Angelico, Christ Judging (detail of Fig. 12)
ri t. :o Dome with Last Judgment mosaic. Florence,
Baptistery
ri t. :+ Attributed to Francesco Traini, Last Judgment.
Pisa, Campo Santo
ri t. :: Nardo di Cione, Last Judgment. Florence,
Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel
ri t. : Heaven (detail of Fig. 22, left wall)
ri t. : Ascent to Heaven (detail of Fig. 14)
ri t. : Scheme of the altar wall, after Vischer
ri t. :o Scheme of the left wall, after Vischer
ri t. :; Scheme of the right wall, after Vischer
ri t. : Self-portrait of Signorelli with Fra Angelico
(detail of Fig. 78)
ri t. :, Benozzo Gozzoli, Portrait of a Friar, drawing.
ri t. o Benozzo Gozzoli, Petrarch, Dante, and Giotto.
Montefalco, San Francesco, choir, wainscot
ri t. + Fra Angelico, Last Judgment, Ascension, and
Pentecost. Rome, Galleria Nazionale
ri t. : Pietro Baroni, Piet and Saints
ri t. Pier with Last Judgment, Orvieto Cathedral
faade (detail of Fig. 6)
ri t. Giovanni Dalmata, Last Judgment, lunette of
tomb of Pope Paul II. Rome, Saint Peters
ri t. Shop of Mino da Fiesole, Last Judgment,
lunette of tomb of Cardinal Ammanati.
Rome, Sant Agostino, cloister
ri t. o Bishop saint, in window embrasure of altar
wall
ri t. ; Archangel Michael, in embrasure of side
window in altar wall
ri t. Archangel Gabriel, in embrasure of side win-
dow in altar wall
ri t. , Archangel Raphael with Tobias, in embrasure
of side window in altar wall
ri t. o Archangel Phanuel/Uriel, in embrasure of
side window in altar wall
ri t. + Ascent of the Blessed, altar wall
ri t. : Assembly of the Blessed at Josaphat, side wall
Gilbert.FrontMatter 10/23/02 3:07 PM Page ix
ri t. Anonymous Italian, c. 1500, Last Judgment,
woodcut.
ri t. Giovanni di Paolo, The Blessed (detail of
Last Judgment). Siena, Pinacoteca
ri t. Assembly of the Damned at Josaphat, side
wall
ri t. o Limbourg Brothers, Hell, page in Trs Riches
Heures. Chantilly, Muse Cond. Copyright
Giraudon / Art Resource, New York
ri t. ; Bertoldo, Battle, bronze. Florence, Museo
Nazionale del Bargello
ri t. Descent into Hell, altar wall
ri t. , Nardo di Cione, detail of Fig. 22, right wall
ri t. o Anonymous Florentine, 1497, Choice of
Heaven or Hell, woodcut.
ri t. + Dante and scenes in cantos 14 of Purgatorio,
wainscot
ri t. : Virgil and scenes of visits to Hell, wainscot
ri t. Claudian and scenes from De Raptu Proserpinae
ri t. Salutati and scenes from Purgatorio, cantos
58, wainscot
ri t. Detail of Fig. 51, scene from Canto 2 of
Purgatorio
ri t. o Hercules Defeating Cacus, and grotesque
ornament (detail of Fig. 54)
ri t. ; Scene from Canto 11 of Purgatorio
ri t. Charity and Envy
ri t. , Scene from Canto 8 of Purgatorio (detail of
Fig. 54)
ri t. oo Raphael, Faith, Hope, and Charity. Rome,
Pinacoteca Vaticana
ri t. o+ Diana and Calisto
ri t. o: Devils and the Lustful
ri t. o Monochromes on altar wall wainscot, right
side
ri t. o Death of Achilles
ri t. o Perseus and Phineus
ri t. oo Stories of Perseus and Hercules, drawings, in
Libellus de Imaginibus Deorum, Vat. Reg. Lat.
1290
ri t. o; Court of Pan. Formerly Berlin, Kaiser
Friedrich Museum
ri t. o Scheme of entrance wall (after Vischer)
ri t. o, Raising of the Dead
ri t. ;o Raising of the Dead, Orvieto Cathedral
faade, bottom section (detail of Fig. 33)
ri t. ;+ Limbourg Brothers, Raising of the Dead, in
Trs Riches Heures. Chantilly, Muse Cond
ri t. ;: Piet with Saints Faustino and Pietro Parenzo
ri t. ; Piet, altarpiece, Cortona, Museo Diocesano
ri t. ; Martyrdom of Saint Faustino
ri t. ; Martyrdom of Saint Pietro Parenzo
ri t. ;o Raphael, Mass of Bolsena, fresco. Vatican,
Stanza dEliodoro
ri t. ;; Anonymous Riminese, fourteenth century,
Last Judgment, fresco. Ravenna, Santa Maria
in Porto
ri t. ; Deeds of Antichrist
ri t. ;, Wohlgemuth, Deeds of Antichrist, woodcut, in
Liber Chronicarum by H. Schedel. 1493.
ri t. o Filippino Lippi, Resurrection of Drusiana,
fresco. Florence, Santa Maria Novella
ri t. + Filippino Lippi, Simon Magus (detail from
Dispute of Simon and Saint Peter). Florence,
Santa Maria del Carmine, Brancacci Chapel
ri t. : Self-Portrait of Signorelli with an Associate.
Orvieto, Museo dellOpera del Duomo
ri t. Five Signs of the End of the World and the
Fire from Heaven, entrance wall. Copyright
Alinari / Art Resource, New York
ri t. Five Signs of the End of the World (detail of
Fig. 83)
ri t. Filippino Lippi, Saint Thomas Confuting
Heretics, fresco. Rome, Santa Maria Sopra
Minerva
ri t. o Fire from Heaven, entrance wall, left half
ri t. ; Youth with Oak-Leaf Crown and scenes in
roundels
ri t. Judith, keystone of the arch x in Fig. 27
ri t. , Man in Turban
ri t. ,o Bald Man and scenes in roundels
ri t. ,+ Niccol Rosex da Modena, Apelles, engraving
ri t. ,: Captives Judged (detail of Fig. 90)
ri t. , Maenad Among Men (detail of Fig. 90)
ri t. , Filippino Lippi, Death of Virginia (detail).
Paris, Louvre
ri t. , Botticelli, The Story of Lucretia. Boston,
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
x i i s + or i i ius + r:+ i oxs
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i x+ roiuc+ i ox
+ni s nook orrrrs a new approach to under-
standing a famous mural cycle of the Italian
Renaissance depicting the end of the world. The
cycle is located in the Cappella Nuova (today
often called the San Brizio Chapel) in the cathe-
dral of the town of Orvieto in central Italy. The
fresco paintings of the Orvieto mural cycle have
been discussed in many books, so a new book is
obligated to offer the reader something different.
This Introduction devotes itself chiefly to those
differences. It will emerge that a good deal of
helpful material has been left out of existing
books, and that some errors have therefore
resulted. First, however, the claim that the mural
cycle is famous must be justified; in that
endeavor, two witnesses are brought, both very
well known themselves: one from the culture of
the Renaissance, and one from our own culture.
The earlier witness is Giorgio Vasari, author of
the Lives of the Artists (1550; second revised edi-
tion 1568), the work that is the undisputed pri-
mary basis for what we know about most of the
artists it presents. With regard to the mural cycle
that is the subject of the present volume, Vasaris
key comment is in his Life of Luca Signorelli, the
painter who executed most of the cycle, finishing
in or about 1503. (Like most modern writers on
the work, Vasari has little to say about the contri-
bution of the painter who started the project in
1447, Fra Angelico.)
Vasari introduces Signorelli with high general
praise: He was an excellent painter, held in his
time to be famous, and his works prized, to an
extent that no one else has been in any period . . .
because he showed the way activity is performed
in nudes, and showed, with great difficulty and a
very good method, that they can be made to
seem alive.
1
But this praise, though presented in
a general way, relates only to the artists Orvieto
cycle; Signorellis other nudes were both few and
immobile. When Vasaris account comes to this
project, he enlarges on the same aspects:
[Signorelli] was hired by the administrators of the
Cathedral of Santa Maria in Orvieto, and finished the
whole chapel of Our Lady,
2
begun by Angelico, in
which he did all the stories of the end of the world. It is
a most beautiful, strange and willful invention in its
variety, of so many angels, demons, earthquakes, fires,
ruins, and a great part of the miracles of Antichrist,
where he showed the great invention and familiarity he
had about nudes, with many foreshortenings, imagin-
ing strangely the terror of those days. In this way he
stimulated all those who came after him, to execute the
difficulties painted, in following that style.
3
He then proceeds to say that the mural cycle and
many other works so spread his [Signorellis]
fame that the pope called on the artist to paint
in the Vatican. That is an error, however, for the
paintings Vasari then mentions were much ear-
lier. (Signorelli did not get any more grand com-
missions after Orvieto.) Vasari shortens this
assertion in his second edition, and adds a new
Gilbert.FrontMatter 10/23/02 3:07 PM Page xi
ri t. + The Damned (detail of central area of Fig. 45)
point that all later observers found true: that
Michelangelo always praised the Orvieto work
very highly, and used some of his inventions in
his own work on the same theme, the Last
Judgment. Naturally this factor has remained
important in Signorellis fame.
Vasari cites just one other work of Signorellis
as much praised, and that briefly: the Court of Pan,
owned by Lorenzo de Medici the Magnificent,
ruler of Florence. This is the artists only other
large-scale work with a group of nudes, which in
this case are motionless. Both works were most
unusual in their place and time in including
female nudes with the males, which was possibly
a factor in their usefulness for later artists. Vasari
first wrote that the Pan was produced with
much anticipation among those who wanted to
see [Signorellis] works, and it was much com-
mended. He cuts this sentence down to the brief
final phrase in his second edition.
4
The result of
the two changes, this and the added report about
Michelangelo, is almost exclusive attention to the
Orvieto cycle, and so it has remained. However,
as suggested below, the Pan was important in
bringing Signorelli the Orvieto job.
The surprising modern witness is Sigmund
Freud, who on page one of perhaps his most read
book, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life,
5
tells a
story about himself: on a train in 1898, he fell to
talking with another traveler, who had also been
in Italy. Freud asked whether he had gone to
Orvieto and seen the famous frescoes there by
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Image not available
and then he could not remember the artists
name. Later, when he checked and found that
the artists name was Signorelli, his main interest
was in figuring out why he had blocked it, as
we now would say.
6
From there he moved on to
broad theories, and in the present context it is
tempting, even if absurd, to see psychoanalysis as
therefore owing its birth to Signorelli.
More realistically, the background making the
incident possible was that Freud had been edu-
cated into a broad humanistic culture. In a later
generation, a psychologist probably would have
lacked that particular point of departure to
induce the question Freud asked himself. The
point here, too obvious to Freud for him to
mention it, was that the Signorelli frescoes were
a destination for educated tourists. Today,
indeed, daily busloads of visitors come to Orvi-
eto for the sole purpose of seeing them. Even for
people who had not heard of the frescoes until
then, they are offered as a principal reason for
visiting Italy. Elementary textbooks on art his-
tory always cite them, most often reproducing
one segment, The Damned (Fig. 1). The tan-
gle of desperate nudes grappled by devils, painted
with sharp muscular stress, reflects Vasaris reac-
tion and seems just right for Freuds.
In Freuds time and since, the normal way to
find out more about the cycle has been to read
about it in monographs on Signorelli. Mono-
graphsbooks on the whole work of an individ-
ual artisthave been the most handy and reliable
source for such information. Monographs on
Signorelli always have one chapter of twenty-five
pages or less devoted to his Orvieto project. By
common consent, there are five or six reliable
monographs on Signorelli: Maud Cruttwell
(1899), Girolamo Mancini (1903), Mario Salmi
(1924), Leopold Dussler (1927), and Pietro
Scarpellini (1964), and a very short one by
Margherita Moriondo (1966). All have the same
title, simply Luca Signorelli, or a close variant,
7
In
the absence of newer work, all continue to be
used.
Two previously rare types of writing on Sig-
norelli have become frequent since about 1970,
and especially in the 1990s. Their significance is
more as an indication of the artists widening
fame than as a new understanding of him,
although at times they do offer new observations.
One type consists of short texts in well-illustrated
books, of the coffee-table type or smaller. Usu-
ally these claim no more than to restate for a
wider readership what had been published
before, and they are likely to repeat old errors
and sometimes create new ones. As for the other
type, which is at the opposite extreme, graduate
students in the United States, Britain, Germany,
and Australia have submitted dissertations on
particular segments of the topic of Signorelli,
such as his painting in specific time spans, his nar-
rative process as seen from certain critical view-
points, his drawings, certain documents, and
connections with liturgical forms. These presen-
tations by beginning scholars under supervision,
seeking admission to academia, commonly pres-
ent new observations and approaches but are
rarely published in full. Instead, those that are
received positively generally have revised ver-
sions of their most interesting parts published as
articles in specialized journals. The one disserta-
tion that has been published in full, and the arti-
cles, are cited in this book, but the unpublished
remaining writings are not, both because they are
not easily accessible and because they have not
been used as bases for inferences here. The latter
factor also applies to the omission of references to
the short texts in illustrated books. In both cases
there are exceptions. A note here summarizes
both types.
8
A number of books frankly address only one
part or one aspect of the work, such as the Dante
illustrations, or the Antichrist scene and apoca-
lyptic analogies.
9
Like the many learned articles
i x+ roiuc+ i ox xi i i
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that also take up partial questions, these often
present hypotheses that are subject to debate.
The most ambitious and important work of this
type is a book published in 1996 to mark the
cleaning of the frescoes.
10
Although in this case
too the title suggests a general work, the content
is different. It presents more than twenty essays
by as many scholars, who have quite properly
been permitted to disagree with each other. In
addition, quite a few of the essays are not about
the mural cycle itself, but have to do with such
things as scientists reports on conservation prob-
lems and nearby groups of paintings.
Indeed, because there is no full-length study of
the mural cycle, the inquiring reader still uses the
chapters in the monographs, along with their
more recent equivalents in the illustrated books.
If one reads all these chapters, an exercise that is
understandably rare, the effect is surprising: there
have been few changes since 1899. The reader is
offered a lively description of these represented
scenes, and the cycle is broken into manageable
parts with praise for them all. Signorellis distinc-
tive style is frequently pointed out. The descrip-
tion has a rhetorical flavor, and is intended to
confirm readers in the view that the work is of
high quality.
The latter, and more specific, element works
toward the goal that seemed to be the main pur-
pose of art-historical work in the earlier decades
and that is still given an important role even
though it is no longer fashionable. That goal is to
make correct attributionsthat is, to identify the
artist of any painting. The data used are works of
known authorship, such as the Orvieto cycle,
established by documents. A corollary aim is to
date the artists works, using works with known
dates, of which again the cycle is an example.
The artists distinctive style in the cycle is thus
defined in such writings for use in these cases.
The monographs chapters on the cycle of course
do not have to argue that this cycle is Signorellis
and that it defines him; they only seek to tease
out what is essential.
Although not all do so, the monographs chap-
ters themselves may explore some related sec-
ondary questions: the internal chronology of the
cycle during the period, some four and a half
years, from its start to its finish; and the role of
assistants in executing some parts. It has not been
possible to reach agreement on these issues,
which helps to explain the reappearance of
newer books of the same type.
The separation of master and pupil depends
almost entirely on judgments about quality in
manual execution, which may be subjective.
Where one student sees a pupil, another may see
the master on a bad day, or may just disagree that
a given area is bad at all. The internal chronology
is similarly subjective. It tends to presume that
the artists evolution is linear, not allowing for
backing and filling. Such irregular shifts might be
especially likely in a mural, however, with refer-
ences intended from one segment to another for
thematic reasons even if painted at different
times. Cumulatively with this, there is subjectiv-
ity in the choice of factors thought to be critical
for the linear development, such as shift from lin-
ear to brushier work, or more to less emphasis on
detail. Such factors have often been the same
ones thought to mark the large evolution of art
in the era. Internal chronology is also less possible
to establish firmly in a short span like this, in
contrast to the whole career of forty-odd years of
a painter such as Signorelli.
11
There is also the question of how important
such judgments are, when used for a purpose
other than the original one of comparison with
undecided cases outside the cycle. When the
entire cycle was under the firm control of the
master, whether a figure was executed by one or
another assistant may not be of great conse-
quence, and likewise when the execution took
place with little interruption, from segment to
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Gilbert.FrontMatter 10/23/02 3:07 PM Page xiv
segment, it may not be possible to date the process
with respect to differences in style. If there were
firm information on these matters, it would be
helpful to introduce it, even if judged not very
important. But the uncertainty and slightness of
effect on the final product has led to the decision
here to downplay drastically the major compo-
nents of monographs, the arguments on author-
ship by master and pupils, and the short internal
chronology. These matters are brought in when a
point can be supported by evidence, generally not
stylisticsuch as whether it was common at the
time to assign pupil artists small-scale border ele-
ments and the like, or technical information, such
as the plaster ground of one segment overlapping
another and thus being of later date. This volume
deals instead with matters that the monograph
chapters have addressed only to a small degree or
not at all. It is hoped that, in the process, the
results presented here can be accepted as more
reliable than the proposals about stylistic variables,
favored by monograph writers.
Because the monograph chapters on the Orvi-
eto cycle do not themselves involve attribution
pros and cons, the lively descriptions are their
chief content. They thus face at once the prob-
lem of the vast scale of the work, with its hun-
dreds of very individual figures. How could it be
described without confusion? All the writers
solved the problem in the same way, suggested
by the conditions in the chapel. They settled on
successive descriptions of the imagery in sections
defined by the architecture. The long side walls
of the chapel are each divided into two equal
parts by half columns. To these four units are
added one of similar scale, at the far end, with the
altar and windows, and another one, at the
entrance end, with wall segments at either side of
the entrance. The vault, with its sets of arches,
provides eight more smaller units.
The monograph writers all make the same
decision about the order in which these units
should be described. They invariably set up a
tour walking around the walls. (The vault, which
is always given shorter comment, may precede or
follow this.) The tour may be clockwiseas in
Cruttwell, who explains she will work gradually
around the wallsor counterclockwise, the
usual choice. It always begins with the story of
Antichrist, on the side wall at the viewers left on
entering, for the natural reason that this is clearly
shown by the relevant texts to have been the ear-
liest event. It then usually works past the
entrance door, turns the corner to move along
the other side wall, with the Raising of the Dead
and the Assembly of the Damned, crosses the
altar wall, where the souls descend toward hell
and rise toward heaven, and finally reaches the
Assembly of the Blessed on the wall where it
began, next to Antichrist. Salmi correctly and
revealingly calls this a cronistoria, a chronicle-
history. The same formula appears in other writ-
ings, ranging from guidebooks to specialized
studies on the theory of narrative cycles.
This formula always encourages, and never
does anything to displace, a fallacy that then
becomes a structural component of the studies.
The central theme of the chapel imagery is the
Last Judgment, a powerful subject that has a long
and steady tradition in imagery, here fully main-
tained. There are many segments, but they do
not follow one on another, as a narrative. The
Assembly of the Damned and the Assembly of
the Blessed are events simultaneous with each
other, and effectively so, in images, with the
judging that sorts them. This unit of imagery fills
the whole inner half of the chapel, both the altar
wall and the adjacent halves of both side walls, as
far outward as the half columns mentioned, and
it fills the entire vault. It therefore fills more than
half of the area painted, indeed about two-thirds,
since the paintable surface of the altar wall, bro-
ken by windows, is larger than the corresponding
surface of the entrance wall, cut by the entrance
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Gilbert.FrontMatter 10/23/02 3:07 PM Page xv
arch. This smaller outer segment of the chapel
does present a narrative chronicle, which is an
innovation in Last Judgment cycles. The scale of
the chapel provided this extra space, which was
filled with what an anonymous contemporary
writer, whose text will be discussed in detail
below, called the horrible preamble of the
Judgment: the deeds of Antichrist and more. The
quoted term will be used here. The frescoes
show this series of events, although the order
around the walls does not match the order in the
texts used. The fallacy of the monographs was to
continue the narrative pattern offered here into
the inner bay with the actual Judgment, so that
the damned are seen assembled before Christ
judges them, and the saved are assembled still
later, as we have the scenes pointed out to us.
The authors of the monographs were well
aware of Last Judgment imagery and in general
have not taken their narrative accounts to the
logical conclusion by stating the relationship just
described. Rather, they tend not to give a title to
the whole cyclebut only to the partswhich is
contrary to the natural and usual approach of
starting with the former and then proceeding to
the latter. Scarpellini uses the name Last Judg-
ment once, in parentheses, but gives the seg-
ments headings set in type like chapter titles.
They are in the usual order, and the Assembly of
the Blessed is noted as in the last wall area.
Moriondo offers the name only after discussing
all the segments in a summary comparing this
cycle with the next one discussed. Dussler prop-
erly speaks of the cycle of Last Things, but he
calls the last segment, the Assembly of the
Blessed, an epilogue to the one discussed just
before, the Rise of the Blessed to Heaven.
12
In
the approach he uses, however, in which these
are viewed as separate scenes, the time sequence
should be the opposite. This problem is resolved
if the Last Judgment is understood as a single
scene, where one moment is shown in simulta-
neous parts, while also, in a typical Renaissance
device, dramatic time is presented by showing
some interchangeable members of a chorus in an
earlier phase of the movement common to them,
and other members in a later phase. These puz-
zles, particularly absence of a name for the cycle,
might result from the authors understanding that
their approach has an oxymoronic relationship
with the standard formulation of the Last Judg-
ment, which is represented here.
The different kind of description in the present
volume is the result of taking the theme fully into
account. The narrative sequence is quite appro-
priate for the smaller portion in the outer bay,
met when first entering. Each scene corresponds
to a segment framed by a column or a corner of
the room, and the scenes as noted are incidents in
a narrative series. The inner bay, however, con-
sists entirely of a single grand image: the tradi-
tional Last Judgment. Its focus is at the top and
center, with the Judging Christ, and from there it
spreads out and down symmetrically. Opposite
walls play against each other thematically, with
the saved and the damned embodying the deci-
sions shown in Christs gestures of condemning
and blessing. As for the columns and corners
internal to this image, the artists, both Angelico
and Signorelli, sometimes let the imagery jump
over them or flow past them while still finding
elegant ways to exploit them. This is easy to see
when the tradition of earlier Last Judgments is
recalled in observing this one. But in the mono-
graphs, that happens slightly or not at all, which is
why they are not followed here.
13
Why have the monograph writers not been
able to recognize all thisand specifically the
way the parts of the frescos relate to one
anotherand why did they present the sequence
wrong? There may be several reasons for this.
First because the central image of the Blessing
Christ is by Fra Angelico it was excluded from
the descriptions in the Signorelli monographs.
xvi i x+ roiuc+ i ox
Gilbert.FrontMatter 10/23/02 3:07 PM Page xvi
Second, the schema in the mural cycle has been
modified from the traditional one (as happened
regularly within the tradition), notably in the dis-
placement of the Raising of the Dead scene. But
certainly the broadest and primary misleading
factor, also a major cause of the two factors just
mentioned, is the architectural element. The
subdivision by columns, the extension to the
vaults, and (in degree at least) the movement
around corners had not been elements in earlier
Last Judgments.
What is fascinating is the way the artists handled
this new problem, and that is something the
monographs do not realize. In fact, the mono-
graphs omit any discussion of the architectural
ambient of the cycle. Taking the wall areas as
scenes and treating the segments in sequence, as
the monographs do, deals with them as if they
were paintings that could be hung anywhere. In
some cases this treatment is surely the result of
working with photographs of the segments, which
entirely removes them from the important con-
text of place. In the present volume, however,
context is a major element and consideration.
Books on single mural cycles, like this one, are
a small but well-formulated category in art his-
tory.
14
They usually include information about
context that takes varied forms but is generally
quite brief. Eve Borsooks book on Giottos
Peruzzi Chapel murals discussed the patrons and
other people in the situation, the clergy and the
rulers of the city, though not the architecture.
The latter may have seemed to be entirely ordi-
nary. The best-known monograph on the Sistine
ceiling, that by Charles de Tolnay, discusses the
architecture in a preliminary section; other fac-
tors of context are cited throughout the study at
key points.
For the present volume, consideration of the
architecture called for much moreindeed, a
whole chapter. The chapel is very exceptional in
scalenotably in height and the way it connects
to the church, as well as in having two bays. The
search for the reason for the chapels truly
extraordinary character takes us to the earlier
construction of the church and to its administra-
tion. The social history of Orvieto, notably its
special relationship to heretical movements, then
becomes involved. Closer reading of the archives
elicits an astonishing observation, that the chapel
had no dedication either to a saint or to a patron
family.
The chapter on these surprising matters comes
first, because it precedes the murals in chronology,
and it is able to make much use of scholarship on
the city, on heresy, and on the architecture. Those
studies, however, have tended to remain isolated
from one another, as studies of the murals have
been from all of them. The standard social history
of the town of Orvieto in this period never men-
tions the cathedral church, and the standard archi-
tectural history of the cathedral building does not
mention that the chapel is in any way unusual. An
excellent book on all the art-historical aspects of
Orvieto Cathedral (Carli 1965) treats the murals
again in isolation, producing a chapter much like
those in the monographs. Thus, instead of merely
citing the relationships among these factors, the
present volume newly defines the light that each
factor sheds on the others. Here too the bulk of
the wordage of this book is without a background
in preceding investigations.
This apparent improvement nevertheless pro-
duced a negative problem. On the one hand, no
more monographs of the traditional kind seem to
be needed, but, on the other hand, professional
readers opening a book about the murals may
expect precisely that, and be disconcerted when
they find something different. Instead of a few
pages on context and then a description of the
paintings, the reader of this book is faced with an
entire chapter on the chapel architecture and
related matters. Eager to find out about the paint-
ings themselves, he or she might wonder what
i x+ roiuc+ i ox xvi i
Gilbert.FrontMatter 10/23/02 3:07 PM Page xvii
the connection is, why this opening chapter is
there at all. This is why it has seemed necessary to
explain the reason for this opening chapter and to
outline its contents. The coherent connection is,
simply, chronology. The city precedes the cathe-
dral, which in turn precedes the chapel, and the
chapel precedes the murals. More critical is that
the murals are the way they are because of these
prior givensand that is a new observation.
This is a major issue for the reader, because
the same need to go beyond the usual governs
the later chapters for still other reasons. After the
chapel was built, the commission for the murals
followed. Documents give rich information on
this process, and these documents have always
been utilized, mainly for extracting the dates and
names of artists. There is also a separate scholarly
literature of high quality on the documents
themselves that goes back to the major work of
Luigi Fumi of 1891 and even earlier. (Yet even
the latest study of 1996 omits some key records;
see Chapter 5, notes 88 and 91 below.) The key
record of the commission to Angelico in 1447
was of course published very early, in 1877, and
it is regrettable that the 1891 work, which was
often assumed to be complete, intentionally
omitted mention of it. The commission makes
clear that it was the artist who chose the theme of
the Last Judgmentwhich is surprising, but less
so, when it is recalled that the chapel was lacking
a dedication. In this context too it has never been
realized that Angelico left a drawing for the
whole inner bay presenting the standard Last
Judgment. The reference has been taken to
describe a drawing of the vault only. This in turn
casts new light on what Signorelli did when he
came to paint the cycle.
The present volume also brings out for the first
time the importance of a series of popes for what
happened at Orvieto. The current interest in
patron and social studies has not taken this into
account. Between the work of Angelico (1447)
and Signorelli (from 1499), the most ambitious
image of a Last Judgment in a nearby locus was on
the tomb of Pope Paul II. It is shown that this
pope had ties to Orvieto, and the tomb image
itself is also here brought forward from remarkable
art-historical inattention. Connections emerge
with other popes too, from Pius II to Paul III.
The last chapters of this volume have to do
with an element that has been much discussed,
but with much-debated findings. This is the
wainscot area, which surprisingly has imagery
taken from secular poetry and similar sources.
The present volume takes a separate approach to
the inner and outer bays, as in the case of the
larger paintings above, but also makes observa-
tions about the interrelationship among several of
the wainscot images. Earlier suggestions have
included cases of doubtful titles of single scenes
that are unrelated to those nearby.
In the process of making a distinction between
the inner and outer bays, this book brings in
another approach that is absent from the mono-
graphs. Like discussions of many Renaissance
complexes, the monographs tend to treat the
work monolithically, presuming that the final
product is identical to a plan made at the start.
This treatment is usually not pointed out, how-
ever, for that would recall the fact that history is
often shifting. Here, however, it is argued that
the cycle is better understood by locating
changes in the project at various points along the
way. The usual view is a tribute to the artists,
who evidently sought to evoke unity in the look
of the work when complete.
This volume follows the shifts in the project in
that it uses a genetic approach. With its basis in
the chronology, it repeatedly introduces new
factors, sometimes stopping also to explore the
bases for those factors. In the end, the mono-
graphs reflect the power of the final unified mes-
sage, and that power of the message is the raison
dtre here too.
xvi i i i x+ roiuc+ i ox
Gilbert.FrontMatter 10/23/02 3:07 PM Page xviii
In the early 1990s the frescoes underwent their
most notable physical change in more than a cen-
tury, in a full-scale conservation program. This
program became the focus of the publics atten-
tion to the cycle for a time, for understandable
reasons: the closing of the chapel to visitors for
several years, and our cultures general fascina-
tion with technical processes. The visual and
communicative qualities of the work, however,
were hardly affected, as is clear from comparing
new photographs with the scarcely different
older ones. It seems symptomatic that in the
commemorative publication (Testa 1996) the
technical and the other papers almost never
interrelate; the latter could have been written
earlier, and some no doubt were. The conserva-
tion, which was excellent, was needed because
the damp walls were a risk to the paintings, and it
also removed dirt and grime. It revealed, too, a
few quite small details of the work that had been
hidden, the chief ones being a head on the altar
wall among the figures en route to hell, and an
arm of an otherwise destroyed figure on the
entrance wall. These will be noted below in con-
text. Primarily, the fact of the conservation is to
be celebrated as a sign of modern appreciation of
the familiar Renaissance masterpiece.
i x+ roiuc+ i ox xi x
Gilbert.FrontMatter 10/23/02 3:07 PM Page xix
Gilbert.FrontMatter 10/23/02 3:07 PM Page xx
cn:r + r r oxr
The Place as a Precondition
p
he paintings that are the theme of this book
were done on masonry walls and so are virtu-
ally immovable. That is a normal arrange-
ment for paintings of that culture, the Italian
Renaissance. The walls themselves have their
own characteristics, which were among the
givens when the paintings were produced; they
are the walls (and vault, or ceiling) of a room
called a chapel, in a church called a cathedral, in
a small town on a hill. Visitors are deeply aware
of these contingencies, but viewers of photo-
graphs and other reproductions often are not.
Books about these paintings generally give some
appropriate information on the town, and a little
on the cathedral, but usually do not stop to talk
about the nature of the chapel where the paint-
ings are. Because it is a very unusual chapel, puz-
zling and perhaps unique, that is unfortunate; any
assumptions that people have about what chapels
are, even if true, are not applicable to the Orvi-
eto chapel.
It was in the thirteenth century that the town
of Orvieto acquired the character that it largely
retains today. The cathedral was built around the
end of that century and the early part of the next
one. In the thirteenth century the population
increased greatly, commercial and professional
specialties came into being, and government
developed, manifested in a monumental city
hall.
1
Orvieto, some ninety miles north of Rome,
shares these qualities with such nearby hill towns
as Viterbo, Volterra, Cortona, Todi, Spoleto,
and, the largest, Siena and Perugia. Today all
show an urban fabric that has remained in place
since that earlier period. Further evolution
focused on water-level towns, such as Florence
and Pisa.
The wealth of the towns attracted predators
generally military clans that took control that was
limited only by fights with other clans. The
towns also became subject to larger neighbors,
such as papal Rome to the south and Florence to
the north. A few of the largest retained inde-
pendence for some generations more. Siena did
so with the same sort of mercantile government,
for the most part, and Perugia did so alternating
between clan rule and papal control. The rest
were overshadowed by these greater powers,
each in a slightly different way.
Orvieto was ruled during most of the four-
teenth century and the first half of the fifteenth by
the Monaldeschi clan, whose branches often
fought each other in a competition that included
assassinations. Yet, between bursts of violence,
placid local affairs retained their importance. An
unusual factor is that the relationship with the
papacy was perhaps stronger than it was in any of
the other towns mentioned. Competing groups
defined themselves either as allied with the
papacy or as champions of autonomy. In the thir-
teenth century, popes often lived in Orvieto
more or less permanently, a fact that is reflected in
a grand thirteenth-century papal residence. There
is a similar residence in Viterbo (the nearest of
Gilbert.Chapter 1 10/23/02 2:11 PM Page 1
these towns to Rome), and both Viterbo and
Perugia (the largest of the group), still show
tombs of popes of that era who happened to die
there. Urban IV (r. 126164) spent most of his
reign in Orvieto and never entered Rome. Today
it is natural to assume that popes were always in
Rome, apart from the Avignon period, but they
actually often preferred these other towns. Rome
had stronger baronial clans and a less pleasant cli-
mate in the warmer months than the towns, over
which the popes also always wanted to reassert
their feudal lordship. Around 1460 the papacy did
permanently gain effective control of Orvieto,
and the Monaldeschi subsided into the role of
leading citizens. At this general period, northern
and central Italy were consolidating into fewer
and larger political units.
Religious heresy played an important role in
Orvieto in the thirteenth century, compared with
all the other towns. It was part of a larger move-
ment of the era, known by various names. The
heretics were often called Albigensians, from the
town of Albi in southern France, and the
Dominican order grew up to fight them chiefly
under that name. Scholars today most often speak
of the Cathari, or pure, a term used by the peo-
ple themselves.
2
They were Patari in Milan,
and in Orvieto then and later they were known as
Manicheans. That last term was picked up from
the name Saint Augustine had used for the
heretics of his time a millennium earlier, and it is
not unsuitable. In both cases the faith was dualis-
tic, identifying good and evil with soul and body
respectively. It followed for the Manicheans,
then, that Christ, who was totally good, could
not have lived in a body. As an offshoot of that,
they denied the Catholic doctrine in which, in
any Mass, the priests ritual transforms bread and
wine into Christs Body and Blood. Wholly good
people at death go at once to heaven, as souls,
while the less good must be reborn as bodies.
This denies the Catholic doctrine of purgatory as
a place where the souls of the moderately good or
bad spend time after death, to be cleansed. It also
denies the Last Judgment, at the end of time,
when, Catholic doctrine says, bodies are resur-
rected and sent definitively to hell or heaven, still
as bodies. Still other related doctrines of the
Manicheans, such as the evil of sex and of animal
food, have less connection with our present topic.
All this, to be sure, is learned chiefly from the
writings of the enemies of the Cathari. Yet
because the wall paintings in Orvieto were also
produced by the orthodox, this may not distort
our reading of their references to heresy.
Outside southern France the Cathari flour-
ished in various Italian towns. However, among
eleven such towns singled out in a recent survey,
nine are north of the Apennines; Florence is the
tenth; and the last, 190 kilometers still farther
south, is Orvieto.
3
The town was thus both iso-
lated from other such centers and the only town
within Romes sphere of influence. One could
then expect Orvieto to be a flash point of conflict
between the heretics and the papacy, exceeding
the general level, and that is just what happened.
Orvieto was in the midst of a virtual civil war
in 1199, and the current pope, the redoutable
Innocent III, sent an envoy to take control, a lay
Roman patrician named Pietro Parenzo. Parenzo
was assassinated, reportedly by a Manichean,
with a hammer blow to the head. It is not sur-
prising that he was immediately viewed as a saint
and that later his body and relics were preserved
in the Orvieto Cathedral. Parenzos biography
was entered into the local catalogue of Masses for
special days and is our main source on these mat-
ters.
4
The power of this set of events even three
hundred years later is evoked in the inclusion of
the assassination in Signorellis cycle of paintings
(Fig. 75).
Orvietos moment on the world stage comes
two generations later, in 1264. The fame today of
the Miracle of Bolsena is largely due to Raphaels
: nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
ri t. : Reliquary of the Corporal, Orvieto Cathedral,
Cappella del Corporale
fresco depicting the miracle in the Vatican
(c. 1512), commissioned by Pope Julius II (Fig.
76). Up to that time, the miracle had retained its
importance in religious contexts. The story is
about a priest who was saying Mass in the small
town of Bolsena, on the shores of the lake of the
same name, and found himself doubting the truth
of the miracle of bread and wine becoming
Christs Body and Blood. He was then amazed to
see blood drip from the consecrated bread (called
the Host in church terminology) onto the
corporal, a small white linen cloth placed
under the chalice and paten (the cup and plate
for the bread and wine) for Mass. The corporal
therefore became a sacred relic,
5
and since 1338 it
has been encased in a remarkable reliquary box
on which a set of narrative scenes in enamel
show what happened next (Fig. 2). The enamel,
a masterpiece of that art, also includes a series of
scenes of Christs life, but it focuses on eight
scenes reporting the miracle.
6
The first shows the
Mass just as Raphael would later present it. In the
other seven, we begin with the report being
given by the priestwho has traveled the twelve
miles to Orvieto, the nearest cityto Pope
Urban IV. We then continue with the pope
instructing the bishop of Orvieto to go to
Bolsena to get the relic, the bishop doing so, the
pope (in two scenes) venerating the relic when it
reaches Orvieto, his showing it to the people,
and finally Saint Thomas Aquinas kneeling
before the pope, to present to him the liturgical
text for the new holy day Corpus Christi (Body
of Christ) the pope had established.
7
The relic today still occupies a focal place in
Orvieto Cathedral. It was transferred to the town
from Bolsena probably not because Orvieto was
the nearest sizable place, having a bishop, but
because the pope was resident. It is generally
assumed without a debate that the miracle and
the response to it were simple products of the
concern at the time to fight the heresy about the
Mass and the miracle of the transformed bread
and wine, so that it might have happened any-
where. But it is more likely that it was a particu-
larly Orvietan event, relating to the local force of
that heresy. The resulting emphasis on the Body
of Christ might seem to conflict with our con-
ventional impression that the religious Middle
+ nr r i:cr :s : r r r coxii + i ox
Image not available
Ages focused on the spirit and disdained this-
worldly perception of material things. It is in
keeping, however, with a separate familiar con-
vention that tells us how the new Franciscan
movement of that century admired nature and
moved toward Renaissance attitudes.
In Orvietan history, the next grand event is
the construction of the cathedral, the building
that would house our frescoes. It got under way
in the 1280s after long discussions.
8
The cathedral
is extraordinarily ambitious in scale relative to the
towns scale and resources (Fig. 3). Especially in
height, it far surpasses the cathedrals of Viterbo
and Perugia, larger papal towns. In those, the
cathedral fits readily within the urban silhouette,
but Orvieto stretches above its neighbor build-
ings in a way that is famous in cathedral towns
of France and Germany as well as in the largest
central Italian cities, Florence, Siena, and Pisa.
It seems evident that this grandeur and propor-
tion embody the special extent of churchly
energy in the town, exceeding the towns local
civic energies.
In the past, writers linked this effect with the
Miracle of Bolsena and the subsequent pilgrim-
ages to Orvieto. Recently, however, the presence
of the popes has been called the primary reason.
9
In early records, which are rich, it is true that
nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
ri t. Orvieto Cathedral, general view
Image not available
there is little about pilgrims or the miracle, but
on the other hand, the actual beginning of con-
struction, around 1290, virtually coincides with
the tail end of papal sojourns. Papal presences had
been frequent, from Urban IVs stay (126264),
to the longest, by Martin IV (128184), but after
that were limited to the fifteen months of
Nicholas IV (129091) and the five months of
Boniface VIII (1297).
10
Papal absence seems not
to have affected the energetic pace of the cathe-
drals construction, completed around 1308 with
no pause and with unusual speed. After that the
rich work on the faades sculptures and mosaics
continued steadily, at a time when the interest in
the Bolsena factor does become clear.
The plan of the cathedral (Figs. 4 and 5) is
almost peculiarly plain compared with others of
its period. Before the later additions, it presented
one very large rectangle modified slightly by the
small semicircular exedra of the apse (Fig. 5) and
the rows of even smaller semicircular chapels
along the sides.
11
Inside, the rectangle was simply
divided into the standard nave and an aisle on
each side. In addition to the exceptional smallness
of the side chapels, what is odd here is the absence
of any cross arm. Such cross arms are consistently
present in Europe in large churches of this era,
and large chapels often open onto them. The
buildings thus show a cruciform perimeter; the
cross arms are the transepts. The only way a
transept might be claimed to be present in the
original structure at Orvieto is with respect to
height. The aisles, in the normal way, are only
half as high as the 33-meter-high nave between
them, except in their final bay toward the altar
end. There they rise to the same height as the
nave, in a bay that is also longer than the others.
These two bays, one on each side of the building,
thus are differentiated spaces. They might be
called nonprojecting transepts
12
or, more mod-
estly, in relation to the transeptal chapels to be
discussed later, they could be regarded as transep-
tal bays. Thus the church, a rectangle at ground
level, was cruciform at roof level. In between, at
the top of the aisles, it presented a cross inside a
rectangle, a form that the Middle Ages explored
in reliquaries of the true cross.
13
Studies that seek to explain this remarkable
structure have most often suggested that it bor-
rowed the model of a great church in Rome, the
basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. An impressive
support for this view is a document of Orvieto in
1290. In this, an official of Pope Nicholas IV,
then present in the town, instructed local officials
that their church ought to be noble and serious
(solempnis) on the model of Santa Maria Mag-
giore in Rome.
14
The churches do share the
same grand scale and the specifics of a timber
roofnot unusual at the time in Italyand
semicircular apse.
15
However, beyond this it is
more difficult to match them. The Roman basil-
ica offers no analogy to Orvietos most distinc-
tive details just considered: the small chapels and
the missing cross arms. These cross arms in Rome
are admittedly unusually short, but they were
added to the church in a remodeling by this same
Nicholas IV, reflecting a clear intent to show a
standard cruciform profile.
16
Nicholas certainly
could have omitted them and built a straight
external wall, more cheaply than providing the
slight extension. The absence of anything similar
in Orvieto must be seen as a negative relation to
the Roman model rather then a reference to it.
(It has been suggested that the transepts in Rome
were short because of a drop in the ground level
at that point, implying that otherwise they would
have been of greater and normal length.
17
) One
might then understand the popes wish to have
the Orvieto church be on the model (ad instar)
of the one in Rome as being focused on the
overall qualities of nobility and seriousnessjust
what his text specifies. It indeed has such quali-
ties. The idea that the copying of buildings in the
Middle Ages normally takes such a generalized
+ nr r i:cr :s : r r r coxii + i ox
form is well established. Yet while this reading
has been adopted by some scholars with respect
to this instance,
18
others have naturally been
tempted by the rare document to seek likeness of
visual detail, in another art-historical tradition.
The generalized likeness is consistent with the
name given to the Orvieto church in early docu-
ments in some cases: not simply Santa Maria but
Santa Maria Maggiore, like the one in Rome.
Visually, the buildings also differ in that the
Roman structure does not have the small chapels
in exedra form. These chapels in Orvieto have
drawn attention as oddities, and a model for
them in a Roman secular building of the time has
been proposed by several writers. That model is
the papal palace of the Lateran, connected with
the church of the same name.
19
Old views of this
now-lost palace show the external aspect of such
a row of small exedrae, which could well have
inspired the Orvieto builder. The effect is cer-
tainly quite like what one sees on the exterior of
Orvieto Cathedral when one approaches from
the side.
20
That is what a pope would see when
he emerged from his Orvieto palace and walked
toward the cathedral across a short space. But
from inside the cathedral it is a bit more difficult
to claim a likeness. That would require thinking
that the visual model from the Lateran had
extended its influence to produce the second
row of exedrae on the other side. Inside, more-
over, the exedrae as series of cups of space
strongly proclaim their function as chapels.
21
That
was mildly implicit from the outside, but inside
thecathedral it is reinforced because they echo
the semicircular apsea chapel too, not to be
found in the same outside view or in the Roman
model. The semicircle of the apse can claim to be
the prime starting point for the rows of smaller
semicircular spaces, the central statement that
they reflect to left and right. One might think
that this design sequence was the result of a desire
to make these chapels so unusually small, as part
o nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
(above) ri t. Orvieto Cathedral, plan as of 1450
(right) ri t. Orvieto Cathedral, plan showing original curved
apse and additions, to 1450
Image not available
Image not available
of the emphasis on rectangular simplicity. Stan-
dard chapels of the period would have been
larger; these at Orvieto can be so modest partly
because their semicircular enclosing walls allow
some of the furniture to extend into the central
space without seeming awkward.
Even when viewed from the outside, the rows
of chapels diverge from the Roman precedent in
a visually strong way, another clue that their rea-
son for being is not to be found there. The
Roman series runs along the entire length of the
building wall, but the exedrae in Orvieto fill only
its central segment, leaving the last bays at both
ends blank and flat. (The last bay at the altar end
corresponds to the transeptal bay inside.
22
) If it is
thought that the inspiration came from the
Roman structure, there have been alterations,
evidently for a reason. The suggestion arises that
there are connections between all these special
choices in Orvieto: the simple plan so outside the
norms of a big church, the absence of cross arms,
and the omission of exedrae at the ends of the
walls. One might hypothesize that all these
choices are connected with a plan by the builder
to counterbalance the simple main form with
external attachments of some elaboration later, to
be attached where omissions had left space avail-
able to fit themfor indeed such attachments
did get built later, in the form of large transeptal
chapels, a special kind of cross arm.
Among those chapels is the one that concerns
us, that would then receive the paintings of
Angelico and Signorelli: the Cappella Nuova.
The only novelty in this hypothesis is the idea
that these modifications were envisioned from
the start. (There were also modifications that
plainly had not been so envisionedin particular
a bigger apse, with a choir in it, which entailed
tearing down the original small apse exedra.)
The most spectacular elaboration soon added
was the unique and very rich faade treatment,
combining large fields of mosaic above and
sculpture below (Fig. 6). To be sure, this had not
needed, for its implementation, the special sim-
plicity of the primary scheme just described. All
it needed was a flat surface that could be filled
with imagery, a surface that was consistent with
that simplicity. Yet it may be regarded, like the
other elaborations, as intended from the start and
thus as one component of the same large con-
cept, partly because it resembles the others and
partly because some sort of rich treatment is nor-
mal in such faades in this period. This faade is
unique, however, in that narrative or quasi-
narrative figuration completely covers it from top
to bottom. It uses two kinds of materials, both
tending to flatness: mosaic in the upper three-
quarters and a special variant of low-relief sculp-
ture below. Writers studying the building have
tended to view the two in isolation from each
other and have given the mosaics much less
attention, partly no doubt because today what
we see is largely a restoration of the nineteenth
century. The splendid sculpture has been
intensely analyzed. Some of the many problems
opened up as a result may be clarified, it is sug-
gested, if it is viewed as part of the whole faade,
downplaying somewhat the division into two
media.
Mosaics had been common on church faades
in the region for more than a century when this
work began. Major examples survive at the Spo-
leto cathedral (1207) and at San Miniato, Flo-
rence, both representing Christ in Glory, and at
San Frediano, Lucca (c. 1250), with the Ascen-
sion of Christ. All fill only a small part of the top
center of the faade, and the rest is not orna-
mented, beyond handsome slabs of colored mar-
ble and architectural membering. The planar
effect is strong. From about 1300 Rome shows
grander projects, with Nicholas IVs Santa Maria
Maggiore, already introduced, and Saint Peters,
with its famous Navicella by Giotto. Both stretch
across wider surfaces and present narratives, but
+ nr r i:cr :s : r r r coxii + i ox ;
ri t. o Orvieto Cathedral, faade
Image not available
still leave the lower area around the doors with-
out figure imagery. In style, they mark a shift
from an entirely Byzantine formulation seen in
the earlier faades mentioned to the modern Ital-
ian approach famous at the same time in the
work of Giotto.
Quite apart from these buildings, other grand
churches at the time show sculpture covering
their lower faades. It may extend upward, but
more sparsely. The richest case in the same geo-
graphical area is at the cathedral of Siena. It is
commonly named as the model for Orvieto,
23
both for that reason and because the Orvieto
sculpture plainly shows a Sienese style. The
Sienese project also includes mosaics, if only in a
small area, and carved vine-leaf scrolls on the
columns at the sides of Sienas main door are
quite similar to those that fill the carved panels at
Orvieto, framing all the scenes. Yet in the major
ways the two faades are very different. Sienas
faade is dominated by very large individual stat-
ues, like cathedral faades in Florence and Gothic
France; it offers no source for Orvietos most dis-
tinctive decision, which was to fill the whole
lower faade with large panels of marble filled in
turn with complex narrative cycles, in very low
relief.
The Orvieto decorations with mosaic and
sculpture were not likely to have been planned
without each paying attention to the other. To
view them in relation may, in particular, clarify
the basis for the unique kind of sculpture. The
use of mosaic in this way at Orvieto was not at all
innovative, so one may think that it came first in
the planning, and that the sculpture developed in
relation to it, rather than the reverse. A concern
that the sculpture should relate comfortably to
the mosaic above could indeed evoke qualities
we find: both the allover surface of narrative and
the pictorial and planar effect. In this context
various other possible inquiries that might go far
afield from the central matter here are opened.
These include the large bronzes between the
mosaic and the planar marbles, and the rough
surfaces of the latter near the top.
24
It is possible
that later during the project the costlier mosaic
gave way to stone below for budgetary reasons.
25
Or one might begin with the fact that both
mosaic at the top and the sculpture below are
quite traditional and that it is the blend that is
novel. Sculpture below might have been advised
as being safer against damage and vandalism.
26
When the cathedral is approached from a dis-
tance at first, the mosaic is more magnetic
because of its glittering color and gold and its
larger scale of imagery. Its relation to the far
smaller scale of figures below is not unlike that
found in the period in painted altarpieces, with
large saints above and small narrative predellas
belowa new formula in the region around
1300 that was first common in Siena and found
helpful in teaching doctrine. To be sure, just as
the sculpture wins when we come close, at its
level, so too it gained the favor of the builders.
The mosaics remained unfinished for centuries,
and came to look old-fashioned.
The Orvieto sculpture, still the most intricate
and vivid part of the cathedral decoration a cen-
tury after it was carved, seems in some ways to
foretell the wall paintings of Angelico and Sig-
norelli. This happens in two of the four seg-
ments, on the second pier (between the left door
and the central one) and the fourth (to the right
of the right door, at the corner of the building).
The first and third are devoted to rather common
themes: the Creation story from Genesis and the
Life of Christ, respectively. They do show more
incidents from those stories than average, as the
small scale permits. The fourth panel shifts from
narrative to a single big image, the Last Judgment
(Fig. 33). This subject, if not so common, did
have a standard formulation, seen both here and
later in the chapel frescoes by Angelico and Sig-
norelli. Its only unusual quality is the sculptural
+ nr r i:cr :s : r r r coxii + i ox ,
+ o nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
ri t. ; Pier with reliefs of
antetypes of Christ, Orvieto
Cathedral faade
ri t. Detail of Fig. 7, lower left section
medium, common for the subject in France at
the time (with quite different details) but quite
rare in Italy.
Before concluding with the very strange sec-
ond pier, this may be the point to notice the
exceptional records evincing admiration for this
whole cycle. Although the statements are few,
the existence of any at all is unusual for such a
small town. The first report of this kind is in the
autobiographical chronicle of Pope Pius II, who
visited in 1460. The pope was from Sienese terri-
Image not available
Image not available
tory and thus a nearer neighbor to the Orvietans
than any pope in memory had been; this connec-
tion, which continued in his family, will reappear
in this study. A constant traveler, Pius gives us
brief accounts of the many places where he
stopped, no doubt much helped by the local
informants pleased to boast. Works of art are
mentioned only rarely in these reports, and these
reliefs are given more space then any other paint-
ing or sculpture.
27
Pius II begins by praising the
cathedral for yielding to none in all Italy in size,
materials, art, and memorable form. The high
and wide faade was carved by excellent masters
from Siena, he says, and the faces, both of men
and animals, seem alive in the white marble.
(He copies that phrasing from Virgils Aeneid.)
The work allows one to see the resurrection of
the dead, the judgment by the Savior, the pun-
ishment of the damned, the rewards of the cho-
sen. That series of four topics, in fact, notes
every section of the rightmost panel, which is
also the standard set for a normal complete Judg-
ment scene at the time. His allusion to animals
evidently refers to a different panel of the series,
quite probably the scene at the left of God creat-
ing the animals, which is at eye level.
As has been observed,
28
the text is exceptional
in 1460 in showing appreciation of work of the
previous century. At the time, art from the tre-
cento in general appeared to be outdated, with
rare exceptions. Such appreciation is thus even
more surprising when the same sculpture is
praised again by a travel guidebook author, Lean-
dro Alberti, in 1549, in this case too the only
work of art of Orvieto so noticed.
29
After calling
the cathedral very sumptuous, Alberti goes on:
In its faade are excellent marble figures done
by the hands of singular sculptors. Among these
is the story in which the supreme craftsman,
God, draws out Adams rib to form Eve, done
with such artifice that it would seem almost
impossible for human skill to improve. The
only other element of the church Alberti men-
tions is the alabaster windows, and although his
book reports on many works of art, these sculp-
tures receive probably his most detailed and most
enthusiastic comments. He enjoys the rhetorical
device of calling God an artist, forming Eve, in
parallel with what the sculptors did, but must also
be credited with having looked. It is not surpris-
ing that this author found this work more to his
taste than such other works in the cathedral as
the mosaics, the trecento frescoes in the interior,
and even Gentile da Fabrianos Madonna (to be
discussed later), which could seem more archaic
because it is less classical. But the silence about
Signorellis work is more puzzling.
One of the four marble panels remains to be
discussed: the second panel from the left, with its
rare theme (Fig. 7). The easiest part of this panel
to understand is the vertical row of figures along
its center line, all enclosed in a vine scroll. To
reach the Virgin at the top, it starts with a
bearded man reclining in sleep, at the base (Fig.
8). This sleeping man allows the vertical series to
be identified as the Tree of Jesse, based on the
opening lines of the Gospels of Matthew and
Luke, where Christs ancestors are named. At
both sides of the tree small narratives have
been rightly understood to be a wide range of
Old Testament scenes, each chosen as an ana-
logue with a scene from the life of Christ that is
carved at the corresponding place on the adjacent
third panel. Yet some of the scenes have proved
quite hard to name. Even more puzzling is the
third and last set of images on the panel, where
the sleeping Jesse is flanked by two rows of
mostly bearded figures (Fig. 8).
The solution was happily provided by scholars
in the 1930s when they found identical sets of
images in an unexpected context: in fresco cycles
in various areas of the Balkans. These scenes
often included inscriptions naming the unusual
subjects.
30
The early studies reported a few such
+ nr r i:cr :s : r r r coxii + i ox + +
cycles, but more were then added, and today no
less than eighteen of them are known, in Serbia,
Bulgaria, and Romania. The earliest, in Serbia,
are of the 1260s. The assumption that the scenes
are Old Testament analogues (or types, in the
terminology of theologians) of Christs life is
fully confirmed. The surprise is the identity of
the rows of figures at the base. They are sages of
the ancient classical world, including Plato, Aris-
totle, and the Eritrean sibyl, as well as various
others less famous. They too offer a model for
Signorelli.
The presence of many such cycles in the
Balkans from an early date, and only one in west-
ern Europe, in Orvieto, has reasonably led most
observers to infer that this imagery originated in
the Balkans and that the Orvieto cycle derives
from that base. Yet Michael Taylor, perhaps the
one scholar who has studied the subject in most
detail, has argued to the contrary. He finds the
basis for this iconography in Western intellectual
currents, most notably in the revival of admira-
tion for Aristotle by Thomas Aquinas and others.
The assertion that the Old Testament events
match Christs career was in general an old idea.
It had long been used by theologians to prove
both the reasonableness of retaining the Old Tes-
tament as a sacred text in Christianity (because it
prophesies the New) and, more directly to the
point here, the truth of the story of Christs
actions (because they had been prophesied). The
latter argument implicated as a major aspect, with
many others, Christs incarnation as a man with a
body. The iconography can be read as support
for this view, against the Cathari heretics, in the
way it reports Christs ancestors from Jesse on.
Taylor proposes that the presence of Aristotle is
an echo of the idea that Aristotle and Christianity
are compatible, which Thomas Aquinas and oth-
ers argued strongly; grouping Aristotle and other
pagans with the Hebrew prophets of Christ
would do this vividly. Orvieto would be a natu-
ral place for this set of attitudes to converge, and
not only because of the special role there of the
Cathari. Thomas Aquinas was resident at Orvieto
at the time of Urban IV as a reader for the local
Dominican monastery. (The view that he was
teaching at a theological school there along with
the important translator of Aristotle, William of
Moerbeke, is no longer credited.
31
)
The chronology, however, makes this claim of
Western origin doubtful. This western Aris-
totelianism, previously limited to academic cir-
cles, emerges as a wider current only in the
1260s, just at the time of the Miracle of Bolsena,
and the iconography is already present in the
same decade in rural Serbia, an unlikely speed of
transmission. It is also puzzling that if this is the
actual sequence the imagery would never recur
in the West, but appear there only once. More-
over, the East already had its own older tradition
of orthodox rebuttals of anti-Body heresies, tak-
ing a generally similar form. Imagery of Christs
human ancestry in the Theodore psalter, a rich
Byzantine manuscript of 1066, has been inter-
preted as making a case against heresy.
32
An epi-
gram by the Byzantine prelate John Mauropous,
also in the eleventh century, anticipates another
aspect of this imagery, in including a prayer:
33
If perchance you wish to exempt certain pagans from
punishment, my Christ,
May you for my sake spare Plato and Plutarch,
For both were very close to your laws, in both
teaching and way of life.
After the decline in Byzantium of the earlier
iconoclastic battles, the great concern in the area
about heretical doctrine focused on the Bogomils,
whose doctrines were the basis of those who
went west with the Cathari and who were so
much attached to the Balkans that in the West
such heretics were dubbed Bulgarians.
34
This
suggests why in the Balkans countervailing ortho-
+ : nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
dox imagery might well be active, in just the form
that is repeatedly found there. The single offshoot
in the West, in Orvieto, may have a link to the
East in the person of Pope Nicholas IV. Long
before his involvement in 1290 with the founding
of Orvieto Cathedral, on the model of Santa
Maria Maggiore in Rome, Nicholas had worked
in the Balkans.
35
In 1270 he had been the head of
Franciscan activities in that region, and from
there he had gone to Constantinople as an envoy
from the current pope to negotiate reunion
between the Eastern and Western churches. This
work shows a main focus on what was proper
Christian doctrine, and in the Balkans he could
hardly have missed the fresh large frescoes
designed to make the case against heresy. When
in Orvieto, the local concern with heresy would
have reminded him of them, in particular when
he was overseeing the form of the cathedral.
In the present context, the pagan figures on
the panel have a relevance that seems not to have
been explored. Signorellis later frescoes on a
Christian theme inside the church are accompa-
nied below by a set of chiefly pagan portraits of
people that, presumably, imply these persons
correlation in some way with Christian doctrine.
The very active discussion of these figures
(extended later in this study) has rightly associ-
ated them with the humanism of Signorellis
time, which asserted the possible contributions of
other religions to Christian truth. Yet this may
not be so new, when it is noticed that something
similar had appeared conspicuously on the same
building almost two hundred years earlier, a situ-
ation that hardly seems to have been taken into
account. When each set of pagan images has
been considered separately, as usual, they may
have seemed more odd than they actually are.
In the Balkan fresco cycles about a dozen such
sages commonly appear, with labels giving their
names. Taylor notes that a sibyl, Plato and Aris-
totle appear in almost all of them; Plutarch,
Pythagoras and Homer in many; and Thucy-
dides, Sophocles, Solon, Socrates and possibly
Euripides in some.
36
Six more appear once or in
a few cases. The strangest of these figures on the
Orvieto panel is Plato, who is accompanied by
the astonishing attribute of a skeleton in a coffin.
Signorellis Last Judgment presented skeletons as
a change from the usual formulas for the theme,
as will be seen. He doubtless had additional rea-
sons, but he cannot have been unaware of this
locally accepted precedent.
In recent times, before the work of Taylor and
others, the identity of these bearded figures on
the Orvieto faade had been entirely lost. Was it
still retained in Signorellis time? One cannot be
sure, but the view that it was seems to be sup-
ported by the fact that the analogous Balkan fres-
coes, with their names inscribed, were still being
produced then and later. Nearer Orvieto, Siena
Cathedral included inscribed statues of Plato,
Aristotle, and the Eritrean sibyl, alluding to a
somewhat similar iconographic theme; these
works of about 1300 were very visible in 1500.
There is a separate connection between Orvi-
eto and the Balkan frescoes that is perhaps even
more surprising.
37
The best preserved of the lat-
tera group in Romania of about 152550are
on the outsides of churches, which they com-
pletely cover. Such a procedure seems unique.
Andr Grabar argued, in an elegant study, that its
source was in fresco cycles in Serbia of the early
fourteenth century, also on church exteriors but
only their faades.
38
Orvieto shares with the sur-
vivors in Romania both themes, of the Tree of
Jesse with pagans and of the Last Judgment, and
also the format that in Orvieto seemed inexplica-
ble: the total coverage of the faade with small-
scale figurative narratives. Absent in the West
otherwise, this then makes it even more attrac-
tive to see a link eastward. Orvieto differs from
the Balkan cases in the media: mosaics above and
sculpture below. However, it is precisely the
+ nr r i:cr :s : r r r coxii + i ox +
media in Orvieto that did have Western tradi-
tions behind them.
To summarize, one may see in Orvieto, quite
possibly under the stimulus of the much inter-
ested Pope Nicholas IV, adoption of a Balkan
scheme both in iconography with an antihereti-
cal statement and in design with narratives all
over the faade. What the Orvietans and their
artists contributed as something new was the spe-
cial sculptural style. These little scenes, strongly
tied to flat planes, may have been separately
inspired by a local source in classical antiquity.
(This possibility, which calls for closer study, was
offered in note 24 above.)
In 1330 the faade sculpture was complete and
the mosaics were being projected. Almost at the
same moment, work was begun on the next
major job, the larger choir. It was vaulted in
1337.
39
Not only was this first change in the orig-
inal simple plan important enough to require
tearing something down, but it was to remain the
largest during the centuries considered in this
study (Fig. 5). As usual, the records are full with
respect to payments and committee votes but say
nothing at all about the broad reason for this crit-
ical step. One may only infer that reason from
general circumstances and from another action of
1337. As for the general factor, choirs have the
special role of being the locus of activity by the
clergy, in Masses and other ceremonies. It seems
likely that such activities were now believed to
need more room because more people were
involved. The local population was not growing,
nor was there any change in liturgy, but the
Bolsena relic may well have been calling for
increased attention.
40
In the sixteenth century the procession of
Corpus Domini, in honor of the miraculous
corporal, was the chief annual event in the
town.
41
It may have brought more outsiders. It is
relevant that Pope Urbans initial proclamation
of the Feast of Corpus Domini in 1263 did not
gain broad adoption in Europe at first, but
became universal in the early fourteenth century.
It was thus natural that in 1337 the cathedral
authorities commissioned the extraordinarily
elaborate enamel reliquary to hold the corpo-
ral, and it was being carried in the procession
around town in 1338.
42
By exception, the reli-
quary was not ordered by the lay committee in
charge of cathedral projects and finances, the
body that will become familiar in connection
with Angelico and Signorelli. Instead, we learn
from the inscription on the reliquary that it was
ordered by clerics, beginning with the bishop,
who was a member of the ruling Monaldeschi
family. The other contributors, specified by
names and titles, were the archpriest (the cathe-
drals second-ranking cleric), four canons, and the
papal chaplain, all of whom shared the enormous
cost of 1,374 florins. The artistsMaster Ugolino
and his associates (socios)are also named in the
inscription. Here again we find a quantity of very
small narratives. The set of eight recounting the
story of the miracle, described earlier, tie the
viewers experience closely to the familiar local
context. In the scene in which the pope emerges
from the city to venerate the arriving corporal,
there is an astonishing panorama of the town of
Orvieto on its cliff, with its churches and lay
buildings. It can only be compared at the time to
Ambrogio Lorenzettis view of Siena in its town
hall, part of his good-government frescoes of
133840. The cityscape is often praised as a
uniquely real such image in its era, but the Orvi-
eto view is actually much closer to the reality.
The thirty-two small scenes comprise the
eight devoted to the miracle, just mentioned, and
twenty-four of the life of Christ. The latter, as is
always noticed, follow closely the model avail-
able in Siena in Duccios great altarpiece for the
cathedral there, of 130811. They thus reinforce
the indications of cultural dependence on Siena
seen in the sculpture. However, the choice of
+ nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
subjects shows its own changes and preferences.
The base offers eight scenes of Christs infancy
and adult career, while the sixteen above have to
do with Christs Passion, a normal arrangement
in the period. Yet the Passion is not at all usual,
in that it focuses almost entirely on the early part
of the passion story, from the entry into
Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to the Crucifixion
and the Lamentation over the Body. There is just
one scene of the Resurrection, whereas Duccio
had given many scenes of the later events. The
choice at Orvieto seems again to show the con-
cern with the Christ as a man with a body who
died after being hurt, with the minimum citation
possible of the unique return to life. It seems
appropriate to a casket containing the relic of his
blood, and again shows the local sensitivity to
this theme.
The reliquary was certainly designed to make
an impression in the annual procession. For the
rest of the year it soon gained a very special place
on its own altar, which it occupies still today, in
its own chapel. This chapels construction was
begun by 1350 and finished by 1356,
43
with the
same speed that other construction in the cathe-
dral had also shown. The chapel is not only
much larger than the quite small exedra chapels,
which were the only ones in the original struc-
ture. It has two bays, making it double the depth
of standard chapels of this period everywhere.
If the grand reliquary were placed on an altar
in one of the very small chapels, it would cer-
tainly seem out of proportion, and placing it on
the high altar would compete with many other
required functions. If this implies that the new
large chapel was planned in relation to this cult,
long before its construction began in 1350, the
same deduction can be made from another factor
that has already been noted and that takes us back
to the original cathedral project of 1290. That is
the omission of exedrae on the side walls of the
building just at the point where this new chapel
of 1350 was then placed. Its actual construction
was even a little wider than had been allowed for
in that way, and required demolition of one exe-
dra (Fig. 5). There could have been several
diverse reasons for this, but one obvious factor
may be sufficient to explain it. In the interim,
added buttresses had been introduced in this area
to support the high nave vault, and they were
used to define the side walls of the new chapel,
fixing its width.
The room with the reliquary on its altar is cer-
tainly meant to be read as a chapel. A door into
this room from the main church space defines the
shift of context (Fig. 4). Inside, the space is a bit
narrower and much lower than the transeptal bay
from which we enter. It is narrower because of
the buttresses mentioned, and lower because the
height is that of all the side aisle bays other than
this transeptal one. Yet it is a super chapel, as is
marked not only by its double depth but also by
its exceptionally long narrative cycle of frescoes.
(These, from the later fourteenth century, record
the Bolsena miracle again on one wall, and, on
the other, analogous miracles involving the bread
and the wine.) This construction gave the cathe-
dral a highly visible annex on one side.
Such annexes to churches appear elsewhere
too in this culture. Examples range from the
much earlier circular buildings on one side of
Saint Peters in Rome, to the funeral chapel
of the cardinal of Portugal on the side of San
Miniato, Florence, in the mid-fifteenth century.
A series of annexes is attached to a side wall at
Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice. The exterior at
Orvieto, however, differs from this recurring
type in a major way. The other annexes insist on
their separateness from the church by their differ-
ence in architectural style, evocative of a square
or circle with its own center and thus independ-
ence. Orvietos chapel shows the same striped
walls as the rest of the cathedral and analogous
gable and roof pitch, leaning on its larger neighbor.
+ nr r i:cr :s : r r r coxii + i ox +
It varies from the rest of the cathedral only in its
much lower roof line. What all this suggests is
that this added chapel is an integral part of the
cathedral itself, and specifically that it is a transept
and hence not a chapel. This ambivalence
between the presentation as a chapel from inside
and the presentation as the buildings transept
outside is remarkable.
Only after 1400 did building activity resume
on any scale, and it then took a form that helps to
explain this oddity. In the interim, energy was
mostly devoted to the large fresco cycles in the
reliquary chapel, as mentioned, and in the apse.
The latter replicated from the faade mosaics,
then in slow process, the story of Mary, name-
sake of the building, culminating at the top in her
Assumption and Coronation in both cases.
In 1406 records begin of work on a second
large chapel, which is also two bays deep, directly
opposite the first one. That second chapel, the
Cappella Nuova, is the one that will be our focus
(Fig. 4). It would become the cathedrals last
major modification. (The connection of a docu-
ment of 1396 with this work is common but
seems unjustified; this will be discussed later.)
The records first refer to a very new chapel
inside the old sacristy, a sacristy that had occu-
pied part of the area. Soon, however, greater
ambition for the New Chapel required tearing
down that sacristys wall.
44
Evidently a small door
in the side wall of the church had given access to
the sacristy, but now the larger chapel called for a
much bigger opening. This entire project was
probably planned for much earlier, since
between 1355 and 1361 a new sacristy had been
built elsewhere, next to the Chapel of the Reli-
quary.
45
A record of the New Chapel in 1411
tellingly identifies it as placed opposite the
Chapel of the Corporal in its likeness (ad ipsius
similitudinem); indeed, the two are a visual
match in important ways. The record of 1411
deals with the tearing down of a second, smaller,
older structure that had been in the way.
46
That
was the chapel under the name of the Three
Magi owned by some of the Monaldeschi. The
Monaldeschi are to receive an adjacent chapel as
recompense, one under the name of the Coro-
nation of the Virgin, to which their family
tombs will be moved. A scene of the three magi
will also be painted there to be assigned to their
name. Dedicating chapels by assigning them a
holy name, as with the Chapel of the Reliquary,
was normal, so the fact that this new chapel, the
Cappella Nuova, being begun at this time, was
not given such a name will appear special.
No record indicates why this new chapel was
built, whether for a cult or for a family and its
tombs, the usual reasons, just exemplified. This
curious absence of such a designated purpose calls
out for attention. The cathedrals lay board paid
for the chapels construction funds from its real
estate, from alms, and from bequests to the
church, as it did the expenses for the church in
general.
The construction may have been slow, for fur-
nishings begin to appear only in 1447, when
plans were made (which were not carried out at
the time) for a stained-glass window with two
musical angels. The plans were no doubt
intended for the single largest window, in the
center of the end wall as today, itself newly pro-
duced at that time.
47
An altar was installed, two
candlesticks were bought for it, and an alms box
had locks bought for it.
48
Another lock bought in
the same year for the tabernacle in the new
chapel is clarified later, first when we read of
buying a rope for the lamp of the Virgin of the
Assumption (Assumpta) in the chapel. Years
later, this tabernacle reappears in a record speci-
fied as of the Assumpta, when there was worry
over damage from rain and wind.
49
Another later
reference cites the new chapel where the image
of the Assumpta is hidden (recondita) in a cup-
board, explaining the lock, and telling us that
the statue was usually not meant to be viewed.
50
Although this tabernacle was repainted in 1490, a
second one in the chapel seems to have been
more emphasized, since the same document calls
for making this one, with a crucifix, ornatissimum,
with gold and azure blue, as well as for adding
figures of Mary and John.
51
However, it was the
first tabernacle, the one containing the Assumpta,
that was on the altar (although this is made
explicit only in a record of 1622 that is con-
cerned with removing the tabernacle). This sup-
ports, one might think, the virtually invariable
opinion that the chapel was dedicated to the cult
of the Assumption, but the prime basis for such a
supposition must be abandoned. The literature
has long alluded to a citizens bequest to the
cathedral in 1396 to establish a Chapel of the
Assumption, but when the actual text was finally
published it showed that he wanted a chapel ded-
icated to the Coronation of the Virgin; the point
seems not yet to have been absorbed in studies.
52
The two cults are indeed closely related, sharing
the same feast day, August 15, but the distinction
between the two is found in countless other
images and dedications. A Chapel of the Corona-
tion did exist in the cathedral not long after, in
1411the one given to the Monaldeschi, as
mentioned aboveand it would naturally reflect
the bequest of 1396.
53
Thus, the motivation for
the large New Chapelthe Cappella Nuova, as
it came to be knowncannot be a bequest for
building a chapel for a cult of the Assumption.
The statue of the Assumption in the taberna-
cle appears in the Cappella Nuova as an existing
object; there is nothing in any record about a
commission to execute it. That makes plausible
the usual view that it was an older statue men-
tioned in older records in other places in the
building. It had the special function of being
carried in procession annually on Assumption
Day, as it continued to be after it was removed
from the Cappella Nuova in 1622. In its earlier
place it had been endowed with a silver crown
in 1401, and then in 1440 with another crown
bearing pearls and jewels. After being moved
into the Cappella Nuova, it would appear, if
anything, to have been less favored. A discussion
in 1461 about a new silk and gold robe for the
statue led to a negative vote; it was the consen-
sus was that there were stronger claims on the
funds.
54
Then in the process of drawing up the
contract for Signorellis frescoes in 1500, it was
voted to raise the tabernacle to a higher position
because the frescoes would then be more beauti-
ful, pulcriores, and that was duly done.
55
This
pushing aside of the statue in favor of the fres-
coes would be an even more striking act if the
hidden statue, as thought, embodied the dedi-
cation of the chapel.
Reinforcement of the concern with the theme
of the Assumption in the Cappella Nuova did
occur in 1472, when the main window was at last
glazed and painted. The image was of the
Assumption, flanked by angels.
56
However, the
implied claim to the Assumption theme was
rather weakas evidenced by a 1502 vote to
make the chapel brighter, so that the figures in
it can show up better, by glazing the windows
with clear glass; the one glazed window already
there might, if the administrator so decided,
either be removed or put in a different place.
This led, the next year, to the installing of two
clear windows, as noted;
57
the measurements
show that these were the two smaller side win-
dows on the end wall with the altar, on either
side of the Assumption window. They gave
more light than the cloth they replaced. Evi-
dently the Assumption window did escape being
removed or otherwise demoted, since there is
nothing about a third clear window, and nothing
again about this context. The Assumption taber-
nacle got fresh paint in 1530
58
and then is not
mentioned until its removal in 1622, when it lost
its place to another image. This also was an old
+ nr r i:cr :s : r r r coxii + i ox + ;
one brought from elsewhere in the building: a
thirteenth-century Madonna panel.
This Madonna panel was informally distin-
guished from other Madonnas by being called
the Madonna of San Brizio, evidently because it
had previously been in a chapel dedicated to San
Brizio.
59
It is notable that the Madonna had had
no status as the focus of the cult in that chapel,
and this remained the case for a long time at its
new site in the Cappella Nuova. The Madonna
of San Brizio remains on the altar of the chapel to
this day. It was the arrangement in 1622 to put it
there, in the place where the Assumpta had
been, that provides proof of the latters previous
location on that altar.
60
The Assumpta was pro-
visionally taken to the choir of the cathedral,
61
and we next hear of it, a century and a half later,
in the library, which is its home today.
62
It is
again hidden in a cupboard except for its annual
role in the procession.
In contrast to the Assumpta statues rather
shadowy departure from the Cappella Nuova, the
arrival of the Madonna of San Brizio was a great
success. The translation was marked by a papal
indulgence and musical celebrations for a week,
donations of gold crowns and money, and later
the grand new altar, an elaborate Baroque con-
struction.
63
The name used before in most docu-
ments, Cappella Nuova (New Chapel),
survived, but it shared its place with and then sur-
rendered its place to Chapel of the Madonna of
San Brizio.
64
The chapel was not dedicated to
this Madonna, though; the name was simply a
handy label for the location. Only in the late
nineteenth century was this name in turn replaced
by Chapel of San Brizio, which is nothing but
an abbreviation of the preceding name, though its
use has become so much the norm that it suggests
a dedication to the saint. Yet San Brizio has never
had any status in the chapel.
65
The current use of the name Chapel of San
Brizio for the Cappella Nuova might suggest
the absence of an actual dedication name. Was
there, though, a dedication to the Assumpta at
least during the time the statue of her was present
there? There is no record of any such dedication,
as there is none of any other dedication, and
none of a change in name when the statue was
removed. Did the statue in some other way
determine the perception of the chapels charac-
ter, as articulated by those who caused the chapel
to be built and by later officials of the church? An
enormous documentary record may throw light
on what the chapel meant, at least to the (pre-
sumably large) extent that its name can tell us.
66
The documents from 1447 to 1622, the entire
time the statue was present in the chapel, have
been surveyed for this purpose. There are three
hundred relevant documents, a quite unusual
quantity of references to a single chapel in such a
span of time.
67
More than half of these docu-
ments assign a name to the chapel. The simple
term cappella nuova (new chapel) appears 153
times, and cappella dell Assumpta appears
seven times, of which two are cases when a sec-
ond name, the usual cappella nuova, is also
included. Despite this vast discrepancy in num-
bers, one might propose that the seven rare cases
have a higher status, which might become clear
upon examinationfor example, if those texts
proved to be the ones in which formal or liturgi-
cal factors were involved, while the 153 texts
were more casual. The simple name Cappella
Nuova indeed might well evoke such a hypoth-
esis, but that does not turn out to be what the
texts tell us. The Nuova texts show a full
range, from casual to formal, including binding
legal documents based on civic decisions.
68
The seven allusions to a Chapel of the
Assumption can all be checked. The first is from
1465, and thus some eighteen years after the
statue was installed and more than fifty years after
the chapel began to be called new. (No other
name, whether suggesting a cult or not, is found
during those earlier years.) In this case the
administrator asks the cathedral committee
whether they want to hire a particular glass artist
to do a window for the cappella Assumpte. He
already has a design with figures.
69
The decision
was postponed. Next, in 1472, we have a memo-
randum that the window in the chapel of the
Assumpte has been completed, followed by
three records of payments for it using the same
wording. The theme of the window, indicated in
preceding records, was the Assumption.
70
After
eighty documents using the term cappella
nuova only, the other name turns up in 1502 in
the form chapel of the Assumpta otherwise
(alias) called the Cappella Nuova. The issue
here was whether to remove the window to gain
more light.
71
Finally, after another century, a
quite different factor is suggested when a citizen
buys the chapel or (seu) altar of Mary Assumpta
in the chapel called the Cappella Nuova.
72
Six of these references are between 1465 and
1502 (when there are thirty-odd citations of a
name for the chapel altogether), and all are alike
in being informal and in their concern with a
window. The later five record that this window
showed an image of the Assumption. (The earliest
does not name any theme, but it seems likely
enough that the same one used later was under
consideration.) References to the chapel in other
contexts, concerning its roof, frescoes, or the like,
never speak of it as the Chapel of the Assumption.
Evidently it is the concern about the Assumption
window that is the sole source of the use of the
name in relation to the chapel itself. The idea of a
cult or dedication to the Assumption did not
emerge from any other circumstances. It did not
even always emerge from reference to the
Assumption window. Other references to the
Assumption window are instead accompanied
only by the more usual name of Cappella Nuova.
Thus the record immediately following the one
of 1465 just cited speaks of the window of the
Cappella nuova; then in 1472 the same formula
is used in three records that immediately precede
the four of that year cited above.
73
The name
Chapel of the Assumpta did not become firm
even in this restricted context.
The double use, as Chapel of the Assumpta
and/or New Chapel, appeared twice in the
record, first in 1502, as discussed above. The sec-
ond record, of 1602, casts an entirely different
light on the puzzle. There the Cappella Nuova is
said to have inside itself a chapel or altar of the
Assumpta. This is in itself not a strange idea; the
presence of two little chapels (cappellette) in the
Cappella Nuova was always a factor, and this will
be explored shortly. Those small chapels, how-
ever, were partly separate spaces, niches extend-
ing beyond the rectangular bounds of the
Cappella Nuova. That does not apply in the case
described in 1602, which involves a distinct sense
of the term chapel often not realized. A chapel
need not have any walls but, as well described by
the archivist Peleo Bacci, may mean something
less, perhaps only an altar with its cult image on it
or perhaps some sort of frame around the image.
Writers reading records of such chapels some-
times do not understand this and therefore assume
the existence of chapel rooms that never existed.
74
In the present case, the reference to the Chapel of
the Assumpta within the New Chapel appears to
refer to the altar with the tabernacle of the
Assumpta on it, and perhaps also the Assumption
window behind it.
This lesser internal Chapel of the Assumpta
might have come into existence perhaps only
potentially, when the statue was moved to the
Cappella Nuova in 1447. It never controlled the
name or cult of the new chapel, as the dominant
continuation of the latter term in the records duly
indicates. Thus it did not necessarily influence the
choice of a theme for the frescoes
75
a negative
inference that can be of basic importance later in
this study. Indeed, studies have usually silently
+ nr r i:cr :s : r r r coxii + i ox + ,
omitted any allusion to the Assumption in dis-
cussing the theme of the fresco cycle. That was
reasonable, although it might have been better to
be explicit about the exclusion.
The positive inference is that the name Cap-
pella Nuova had no real competition, at least
until centuries later. In this it is unique in Orvieto
Cathedral, and apparently elsewhere; there are no
analogies for such a name. Normally chapels are
referred to by the name of the cult celebrated or
the family that is the owner. This is the case with
all other chapels in Orvieto Cathedral, several of
which have been incidentally named already.
Here the two little chapels within the Cappella
Nuova are reported in the records by naming the
bodies of Saints Faustino and Pietro Parenzo in
one case, and Mary Magdalene or the Gualtieri
family in the other; other structures in the cathe-
dral were referred to in the records as new
when they were very new.
76
What is special here
is the continued use of the term for our particular
chapel over three centuries.
This apparently small point has a large implica-
tion. It helps to clarify what this space is all about
and why it was built. Though it is not otherwise
the case with chapels, other types of structures
are permanently called new, such as bridges, as
in Paris; city gates, as in Verona; and entire cities,
as in Naples. Such names allude, with pride, to
the improvement the named structures constitute
over previously available similar structures. They
signify a quantitative increase in amenity or the
like, without a differentiation of function but
simply more of the same. They often differ from
their predecessors in location, so that, for exam-
ple, the new bridge allows one to cross the river
more conveniently.
Chapels, instead, are normally different in cult
function from previously existing chapels. In the
case of the Cappella Nuova, this cult function
was apparently not a big consideration, so one
must ask the reason for this rather expensive
enterprise, something the literature appears never
to have addressed. Clues to this oddity are avail-
able once it is made articulate.
Documents on the construction of the Cap-
pella Nuova referred to the Chapel of the Reli-
quary, as in the early one quoted above; the
Cappella Nuova is directly opposite, and similar,
we are told. The location was significant enough,
we are told in 1411, to require tearing down a
previous building on the site: the Monaldeschi
chapel was torn down on account of the new
construction of the big chapel.
77
This differs
from other chapels; the unimportance of specific
cults is compensated for by the importance of
location.
: o nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
ri t. , View into the Cappella Nuova
Image not available
On the outside, the similarity of the Cappella
Nuova to the Chapel of the Reliquary, opposite,
is very marked. Again, it does not look like a
chapel there, but like a transept arm on the basis
of the same continuity with the masonry of the
nave. Inside, however, it is visually a chapel,
essentially because it is separated from the main
church area by a partial wall broken by an
entrance door (Fig. 9), just as in the opposite
chapel. Yet the two structures differ seriously in
that the older chapel had a standard chapel func-
tion, for the cult of the relic, but the Cappella
Nuova had none.
While the older chapel carried an allusion to
its double character as a transept and as a chapel,
in the newer chapel only the transept aspect gets
its full normal development. Its title as a chapel,
Cappella Nuova, is informal, as is evoked in
1500 by a document speaking of the chapel
popularly (publice) called the new chapel.
78
What
is unusual is that there is no corresponding formal
name at all.
Transepts in churches also have functions, if
only of a generic kind. They offer welcome
added space for church needs in general; for
additional altars, crucifixes, and tombs; and for
entrances to small chapels. The Cappella Nuova
had all these functions, but the goal in the design
was to give the building matching cross arms
that is, a real transept. This desire to give a
church honorable completeness is familiar
enough, except that it normally involves the
faade or the crossing tower.
79
There is nothing
strange in its being a transept. The oddity is that
the older cross arm had doubled as the relic
chapel, so this one had to double as a chapel too,
even if it had no normal chapel function. Build-
ing it brought honor and made things right, and
so too in the next stage did the process of adorn-
ing it with frescoes.
+ nr r i:cr :s : r r r coxii + i ox : +
cn:r + r r +vo
Planning the Frescoes
p
nterior construction of the Cappella Nuova
was finished in 1444, when it was vaulted; a
beamed roof was still to come.
1
Discussion of
arrangements for the altar and its image followed
in 144647, as already discussed. Thought had
been given to wall paintings long before, in 1425,
when two mosaicists were at work in another
part of the building and were considered for a job
here too. But nothing happened at that time;
perhaps the expectation that the building would
be ready soon was too optimistic.
2
The first return to such plans for painting that
we know of appears in the records in 1446. The
archdeacon of the cathedral, Galeotto dei Miche-
lotti, who was from Perugia, received a letter
from Rome suggesting a possible artist. During
this period, the archdeacon was the top-ranking
cleric in town after the bishop (who was often an
absentee). The holder of the office is rarely found
involving himself in construction issues, but
Michelotti was an exception in that he became
involved several times. On a visit to Rome shortly
before, he had admired a stained-glass artist work-
ing for the pope, and on his return to Orvieto he
recommended the artist to the cathedrals lay
committee, which was in charge of construction.
On March 16 the committee accepted the idea,
and soon afterward the artist, a Benedictine monk
named Don Francesco di Barone Brunacci, came
to town and signed a contract.
3
He then immedi-
ately went back to Rome to clear up some affairs,
and from there wrote on May 10 to suggest two
more artists to the committee for other work they
needed done.
4
One was a mosaicist, who might
come for expenses. The other was a painter,
whom Don Francesco describes as that Brother of
the Observance of the Order of Preachersthe
stricter branch of the Dominicanswho is such a
notable (egregius) master painter; he wishes to
come this summer and reside in the city. We
learn all this from the prcis of his letter entered
into the minutes of a meeting of the committee.
They responded by inviting the painter to come
for discussion, but nothing happened for a year. A
year later, on May 11, 1447, the committee assem-
bled with ten other leading citizens, the procedure
used for major decisions. These ten, added to the
committee of four, included as the first-named
Honorable (spectabilis) Gentile de Monaldeschi,
co-ruler of the town of Orvieto with his brother
Arrigo.
5
The purpose of the meeting was to
deliberate to the honor of the church.
How concretely honor was at stake emerges
when they observe that the walls of their new
chapel are whitewashed (scialbida) but not
painted. (The groups secretary here shifts from
Latin to an Italian word for which he evidently
knew no dignified synonym.
6
) For the honor,
again, of the church, the group concluded, the
walls ought to be painted, and that by some
good and famous painter. They then come to
the Dominican, who is painting for the pope in
the Vatican and is famous beyond all other Ital-
ian painters. They note that he has named his
terms for work during the three summer months,
when he would not be working for the pope,
and then vote to authorize Arrigo Monaldeschi
to hire the Dominican to paint the entire chapel,
by working for the three months each year until
the job is done. The last sentence adds: And the
said master is called Brother John. The scribe,
and perhaps the speakers, had failed to give his
name before. This person was Fra Angelico, an
observant Dominican then painting for the pope.
To call Fra Angelico the most famous painter
in Italy was not unreasonable. If caution is
proper, it is for the interesting reason that such
labels are hardly known for painters at the time.
From our viewpoint on the era, Pisanello would
probably have outshone him in esteem at that
moment, but no one else. Pisanello had worked
on frescoes in Rome for a pope twenty years
before, but after that had been in other parts of
Italy, at various courts. In Orvieto, Angelico
might well not have been recognized, and even
in Rome he might have been overshadowed by
younger, successful visitors like Masolino.
7
The patrons motives and attitudes are articu-
lated sharply, and they are not what is often
assumed, on less good evidence, to be the atti-
tudes typical of such persons at the time. Yet it
does not seem to have been the first time this
committee had taken this approach. Don
Francesco had been recommended with the
argument that he was a papal artist, and twenty
years earlier the predecessor committee had hired
Gentile da Fabriano, who also had status as the
most famous painter in Italy.
8
They had taken
advantage of the journey he was making from
Florence to Rome to continue working for Pope
Martin V. In the preceding century they had
invited, as head masters of the cathedral works,
first Andrea Pisano, who had succeeded Giotto
in the same post at the Florence Cathedral, and
then Orcagna, the most prominent artist in his
time in Florence.
On June 1, 1447, Angelico is recorded in
Rome as receiving the last of a series of payments
for his work there.
9
On June 2 in Orvieto, the
committee and the other citizens met and noted
that Angelico had agreed to come and should
arrive before Corpus Domini, June 8.
10
The
groups administrator, the camerlengo, so informs
them, clearly having had word from Angelico.
He then asks the committee a question, evidently
propounded by Angelico in the same message. It
is the first of two extraordinary points in the min-
utes of this meeting. It requests that provision be
made and ordered for what should be painted
there. The second extraordinary point emerges
when they respond, as the minutes describe.
After they repeatedly talked it over, they deter-
mined and decided to wait for the said master
painter and hear him, and then decide it, after
having heard his advice. Thus, we learn that the
theme, or iconography, of the frescoes had not
been set. They may have discussed some prefer-
ences in their repeated discussions, but, if so,
apparently none was persuasive.
The decision to wait for Angelicos input may
have been because of a lack of any appealing
ideas, or possibly the strategy of some members
to block an idea they did not like. In either case,
the choice to wait for Angelico, and its being
treated as natural, conflicts with a common cur-
rent idea about the culture of this era: that
patrons have specific ideas about subjects from
the beginning of their plans to have work done,
and hand them to artists to work up.
11
These
patrons and their predecessors on the committee
had had forty years to formulate a theme since they
ordered the construction of this large chapel. In
the event, their concern about choosing the artist
preceded not only any such formulation but also
the installation of an altar. They did this in early
1447 and brought the Assumpta statue to set on
the altar. Although they evidently believed that
was a better place than its earlier location, still, as
was observed, it got less attention and care in the
following decades in its new location than
before. The statues aura notably did not extend
to evoking a choice of theme for the frescoes,
as presumably it would have if it had been
regarded as the image defining the chapels name
and dedication.
What seems peculiar in all this may perhaps
cease to be so if we return to the observation that
the space was not a chapel in any simple or
exclusive sense, but also functioned as a cross arm
or transept. Transepts in themselves do not
implicate any types of themes for decoration, a
negative fact about them that tends to be left
unarticulated. Like their space, their walls are
available for any religious need of the church
altogether. One might expect that the only
restriction would be that it tend to honor the
patron and make clear to the viewer that it does
so. The committee may be presumed to have
been committed to such general aims. But like a
well-intentioned rich donor or board in more
recent times, it might have no specific ideas for
its good works at a given time and be willing to
consult a respected specialist. In the Orvieto case,
that specialist, we are told, was the painter, an
expert not only in fresco technique but also in
religious themes. The whitewashed walls were
obviously not good, in large part because they
indicated cheapness. Honor, expense, and the
artists fame come together in the minutes of the
committee.
Other documents of the time indeed show
patrons who have specific plans that are then
assigned to artists, notably in contracts. (Yet it
should be noted more often that such contracts
usually only assign themes in a general sense, like
titles, not particular symbols or other details.
12
)
Contracts, usually our only source for such infor-
mation, are, however, an endpoint in the hiring
process, which is also a factor often not consid-
ered. The minutes of this committee meeting
offer an uncommon record of what preceded a
contract. In the few other similar known cases, it
again emerges that the artist played either a large
or a small part in the choice of theme, which
then became binding in the contracts.
13
Patrons
are apt to respect the artist as someone qualified
to choose themes, because he produces religious
objects all the time. Ruler or merchant, the
patron was faced with a decision outside his own
expertise. Like the buyer of a package tour or a
computer today, he may well be pleased to get
the suggestions of the provider.
Angelico arrived in Orvieto on schedule, for
on June 10 there was a payment for items pro-
vided him: a flask and the like.
14
Although the
modern image of this artist is otherworldly, there
is much to suggest that he was an efficient
worker.
15
The contract, signed on June 14, gives
evidence of that.
16
Its preamble notes, once again,
that it follows upon many talks, debates and dis-
cussions about all and each of the matters written
below. This makes it the more conspicuous that
the long subsequent text says nothing at all about
the subject of the painting to be done, almost
invariably an item in similar contracts, and the
one item the committee had voted to discuss.
The next five clauses of the contract commit
the painter. He is to work diligently along with
three named assistants: Benozzo Gozzoli, Iovanni
(sic) Antonio, and Jacopo de Poli. They had all
worked with Angelico in Rome, and thus came
to Orvieto with him as a team. In this period it is
rare to find assistants named in contracts, an
inclusion attractive to historians. It was required
here because Angelicos pay came not to him but
to his order. In the more usual case of lay artists,
the master paid the assistants, who therefore were
not named in contracts between the master and
the patron.
The next clauses are standard, calling for
beautiful and praiseworthy figures and faithful
work in the judgment of any good master of
r i:xxi xt + nr r r r s cor s :
painting. Angelico is to begin the next day, June
15, and continue during the four months from
June to September (that refers to the four named
months, three months in net time from mid-
June), and to do the same yearly until the whole,
tota cappella, is completed.
Seven clauses commit the administrator in the
role of patron. Six agree to paying the four
painters and providing their pigments, food and
wine, and expenses, and to reimbursing expenses
already incurred. Only the seventh clause is
remarkable. It provides that in the meantime,
while the scaffoldings are being built, Angelico
will produce the design of the paintings and fig-
ures which he is to paint in the vault of the
chapel.
It clearly saves time to design while the scaf-
foldings rise, but this part of the agreement also
means that the contract precedes the drawings.
This appears to be the only known such case in
the culture. Some contracts actually allude to
drawings having been approved already by the
patron, and most seem to imply this by naming
the theme. But in the case of Angelico the theme
too is absent from the contract. The two omis-
sions, of drawings and named theme, are hardly
to be regarded as unrelated. Both are evidence of
full confidence in the artist even without any
demonstration of what the artist intends to do.
Angelico had been quite unknown to the com-
mittee members until they called him to come a
month earlier, so his fame and status as the popes
painter apparently sufficed. No doubt a general
theme was set, to the extent of the type of title
that contracts commonly include. But having
waived viewing of any drawings, the committee
could not have had much of an idea of what they
would get.
The theme, undetermined for forty years,
began to take detailed shape in the drawings
being done while the scaffolding went up. In a
few more weeks the drawings began to be exe-
cuted as frescoes. Within a week after the painter
arrived, then, the theme was set. After forty
years, it was the actual presence of the artist that
led to actual activity. The committee had asked
for his input, and their decision to have him pro-
ceed without presenting drawings leads us to
conclude that they accepted what he suggested.
Viewing drawings before a contract was signed
had been common in Orvieto before and would
be so again. Recent writers have generally
accepted the idea that the choice of theme origi-
nated with Angelico.
17
The one oddity, perhaps
even more remarkable, is that the recent litera-
ture on Angelico has not given his theme its cor-
rect name, as we shall see.
How did Angelico arrive at a decision in a
week, at most? No doubt he had traveled to
Orvieto with some possibilities in mind, themes
that might make doctrinal or aesthetic sense.
Local conditions when he arrived might then
have excluded some and brought forth new ones.
Any new considerations added on arrival were
probably not doctrinal, given the committees
lack of focus. Likewise, the theme we have
shows no particular connection to previous
Orvietan concerns. The lack of modern attention
to this matter may be viewed as a tribute to the
power of the frescos on the walls by Angelico
and Signorelli; the scenes convey a sense of being
there inevitably, so that we are unlikely to ask
what generated them.
18
What Angelico certainly did soon on arrival
was visit the chapel, where the particulars of its
wall and vault surface had importance for his
work. Such visits are on record when later artists
came to discuss work in the same chapel; Perug-
ino spoke with the committee after he had seen
the chapel and what was to be done in it, and
almost the same words are used about Sig-
norelli.
19
In records of works by artists who could
not visit sites where their paintings would go,
information about room measurements and
: o nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
directions of the light is sent to them.
20
What
Angelico saw was a paintable area at least twice as
large as anything in his twenty-five-year career
up to then. His largest previous work was proba-
bly the Crucifixion fresco at San Marco, Flo-
rence, on the thirty-foot-wide wall of the
convent chapter house. In Orvieto, the two side
walls are each forty feet long, with a divider in
the middle, not to mention the vaults and end
walls (Fig. 9). All this could hardly have failed to
make a significant impression on him. Yet that
need not suggest that he found the situation
daunting. He had coped readily before with
projects of similarly large scale, notably the series
of forty-odd cell frescoes also at San Marco. But
those were single images of moderate size, one
per room. Here the task was to compose a single
enormous unit.
In the effort to reconstruct how Angelico
explored the problem, we are of course greatly
aided by knowing the outcome. The theme he
began to paint on the Orvieto vault in June 1447
was the Last Judgment. But that fact will need to
be explored, since it is astonishingly passed over
or downplayed in the standard books on the
artist. A special aspect of this theme at the period
was its association, in painting and mosaic, with
exceptionally large surfaces. It was the only
theme more often represented on such a surface
than on a moderate or small one; conversely,
large surfaces are decorated with Last Judgments
more than with any other theme.
21
Large frescoes
of the period not of Last Judgments seem to be
one of two types, neither found very often. One
type simply blows up a standard theme like the
Crucifixion. Notable examples of this are
Cimabues work in the upper church at Assisi
(interestingly placed in transept arms); Angelicos
San Marco fresco just mentioned; and several, at
an intermediate date, in the Campo Santo at Pisa
(where there is also a huge Last Judgment). The
other type is found when a unique theme is
developed for a site on a large scale, as in the
chapter house of the Dominican church of Santa
Maria Novella in Florence, which has topics cel-
ebrating the order. Neither of these two types
evidently is readily evoked for someone looking
at a blank large space, but the Last Judgment is.
Both types would require prior concern with
those themes, and in the former case, adjusting its
scale upward.
Angelico could have dealt with his big wall
space in a different way. Most obviously, he
could have subdivided the wall with a few or
more painted frames, and then, as is common,
the images inside the frames could be episodes in
a narrative. Orvieto had frescoed walls of this
kind as nearby as in the opposite Chapel of the
Reliquary and in the choir, both being spaces of a
size much like that of the Cappella Nuova.
Angelico painted such a narrative in the smaller
Chapel of Nicholas V in the Vatican. Yet at the
time there was apparently a trend among innova-
tive painters to produce larger scenes on walls,
extending to their full width (though not height)
without internal frames. This is seen in Masac-
cios Brancacci Chapel in Florence, in Fra Fil-
ippo Lippis choir in Prato, and in Piero della
Francescas choir in Arezzo. Perhaps these were
stimulated by the admired model of Giotto,
which was visible in Giottos work in chapels at
Santa Croce in Florence. The matter would need
a fuller study.
A number of models of large frescoed Last
Judgments can be found in or associated with
central Italy. For us, Giottos work in the Arena
Chapel is the obvious point of departure (Fig. 10).
Although this work was painted farther north, it
was surely well known in Giottos own region of
central Italy. Proof of this is the virtual copy after
it in the small town of Tuscania, some thirty miles
south of Bolsena and thus in the orbit of Orvieto.
Giotto had followed a local Byzantine precedent
in northern Italy by giving this unified image the
r i:xxi xt + nr r r r s cor s : ;
entire end wall of a church, over the entrance
door. He had graphically emphasized its scale by
the contrast with the nearby small narrative scenes
on the side walls. Artists following him offered
variants on this general approach, some of which
will be cited further for their relationships in
details with Angelicos work. Nardo di Cione
spread a Last Judgment over all three walls of a
large chapel at Santa Maria Novella, Florence,
which was certainly very familiar to Angelico,
who had painted for the same church. The fres-
coed Last Judgment at the Campo Santo, Pisa,
mentioned above, was spread along a major part
of the buildings very long side wall. A churchs
side wall was also used by Orcagna at Santa Croce
in Florence. And as a late member of this series,
shortly after 1400, a Sienese painted the theme on
a church entrance wall over the door and
extended the subject to the adjacent side walls;
this was in San Gimignano, nearer to Orvieto
than any of these others.
Thus, given a large wall area and an undecided
theme for it, a Last Judgment must have come to
mind, and the new fashion for wide frescoes
would encourage it. The Orvieto people knew
the theme well because of their admired sculp-
tured Last Judgment on the cathedral faade, and
there could not have been any objection to
ri t. +o Giotto, Last
Judgment. Padua, Arena
Chapel
Image not available
ri t. ++ Fra Angelico, Last Judgment. Florence, Museo di San Marco
repeating a theme, for the life of the Virgin
appears both on the faade mosaics and in the
choir frescoes. Needless to say, the theme satis-
fied the one general criterion that was certainly
present, that of being a religious theme.
It is unreasonable to imagine that in these cir-
cumstances Angelico did not think of a Last Judg-
ment as a good option. Moreover, he had painted
one himself, on a small panelone of the very
rare treatments of the theme in central Italy after
1400 (Fig. 11).
22
Yet even if this is enough to settle
the matter, it certainly remains possible that the
theme might have been overdetermined, with
further stimuli. One should ask whether the
theme might be associated in meaning with the
Assumption, with which the chapels altar had just
been associated. The one proposal along that line
known to me, however, turns out to lack founda-
tion.
23
Another recent study has associated the
work (as finished by Signorelli) with the ideas of
Saint Augustine.
24
This is necessarily proper in a
general way, because the saints account of the
Last Judgment in the City of God, in its twenty-
second and last section, was the most detailed and
authoritative description known. (Biblical author-
ity for the Last Judgment, which was very slight,
will be discussed further.) Augustines text was
thus the point of departure for all Last Judgments,
from their first known appearance in the eighth
century. Angelico participates in that use, but
nothing shows that he did so in any fresh way, or
turned to it directly. Indeed, his imagery shows no
modification of the factors that were standard in
the immediately preceding tradition. He and oth-
ers may have had fresh views on the matter, but if
so they did not register them here. It was set up to
be a large-scale devotional image, so that line of
inquiry seems impossible to pursue further.
Thus Signorellis task was set fifty years before
him. After beginning on schedule on June 15,
Angelicos work proceeded with the same effi-
ciency as in the preceding stages discussed. The
scaffolding had been built by June 25, or at least
had risen high enough that a worker fell from it
and died a few days later.
25
The record most
revealing for us is that of the purchase, from a
r i:xxi xt + nr r r r s cor s : ,
Image not available
paper vendor (cartaro) on June 17, of a gavantone,
which then was given to the master painter to
make a certain drawing.
26
Drawing, it will be
recalled, was one of the two initial activities
called for by the contract, along with the scaf-
folding. The word gavantone is not found in Ital-
ian dictionaries, but three earlier Orvietan
documents use it in a helpful way. A gavantonem
magnum is included in an inventory of cathedral
property in 1377 and is said to have on it a repre-
sentation (signum) of the faade. A similar record
from 1383 lists four gavantones that contain draw-
ings of the faade, the wall gable, and the princi-
pal window. These records have generally been
linked to two surviving parchment drawings of
the faade, measuring respectively 107 by 77 cm
and 122 by 89 cm. Finally, in 1402, payment is
recorded for a gavantone of sheepskin (membrane)
on which a drawing of a planned oratory is to be
produced by a master newly hired.
27
Angelicos
gavantone is different because it was made of
paper, but apparently not because of its large size
(indicated by the suffix -one) or because it showed
a large project.
Angelicos gavantone was also similar to the oth-
ers in that it was preserved in the building com-
mittees files. This first emerges in a record of
1490, when the committee wanted the painter
Fiorenzo di Lorenzo to visit to see the drawings
of paintings to be done in the church.
28
It is true
that several projects for paintings were then being
discussed, and those for the choir presented prob-
lems,
29
perhaps as serious as those for the Cappella
Nuova did. It may well be that Fiorenzo was to
consult on both, as the plural drawings might
suggest, and that would have been reasonable. In
any case, a record of November 25, 1499, makes
it certain that Angelicos drawing was in existence
at that time. Signorelli had begun working earlier
and had used Angelicos plans, but then he had
reached a point requiring a pause.
30
Minutes of a
meeting report that half of the said New Chapel
had a drawing, given earlier by the venerable Fra
Giovanni, who began to paint the said chapel,
and now that drawing is finished, and there is no
drawing of the other half. It emerges here that
Angelico had not made a drawing of the whole
vault, as his contract specified (unless it had been
discarded, which is not likely). At this point, in
1499, Signorelli was working under a contract to
paint the two-bay vault only and had completed
the two triangular segments of the inner bay, near
the altar, that had been left undone by Angelico.
Signorelli was supposed to proceed to the outer
vault, near the door of the two-bay chapel, but
without a drawing by Angelico to guide him, he
could not.
In compensation, however, the text informs us
that Angelico had drawn half the chapel (dicte
Cappelle nove medietas)that is, not only the vault
but also the walls of that inner half. This has been
invariably misunderstood, for all studies state that
his drawing showed only half the vault. The
error seems to arise from noticing that the draw-
ings limited coverage prevented Signorelli from
continuing beyond the inner vault. That seems
to suggest that it showed only that vault, but fails
to notice that his contract was only for the vault
and not for the walls at that time. Hence, what-
ever the drawing showed outside the vault
would not be of immediate concern.
31
The report that there was a drawing, used by
Signorelli, showing the chapels inner half is a
key to what Signorelli did later for the walls,
when he got his second contract. The indication
that Angelicos drawing did involve the walls is
based not only on the actual document but also
on consideration of regular procedures. As will
emerge, Angelico began the vault with the Judg-
ing Christ, a main detail of any Last Judgment
image. To paint it, he would have had to have
before him the general scheme of his whole
composition, in order to be sure of assigning this
segment its appropriate proportion. The client
r i:xxi xt + nr r r r s cor s +
ri t. +: Fra Angelico and Signorelli, Vault of Cappella Nuova
too would want a view of the whole representa-
tion and would retain it, thereby making it avail-
able to show to later artists in discussions of
continuing the work. A drawing of the vault
only would be useless for either function. If there
is a puzzle here, it is why Angelico did not draw
the outer bay too. The likely reason will be con-
sidered later.
On July 11, as the next major event, another
artist was hired for the crew.
32
This must have
been a local man, because Angelicos entire team
was already at work. Evidently Angelico in his
Image not available
systematic way was further along with plans than
his three assistants could keep up with. The new
man, Master Pietro Baroni, presents the
unusual case of a master assisting another master.
The record of Baronis hiring shows sensitivity to
this, calling Angelico head master, a term not
found otherwise in these records.
The two bays of the chapel each have a vault
with four triangular areas available for painting,
areas that are formed by the supporting arches
that cross the vaults from corner to corner (Fig.
12). It is common in Gothic construction for
such arches to support the roof. Because each bay
is rectangular, the four triangular fields comprise
two that have acute angles at the center of the
bay and two that have obtuse angles. The acute
triangles have bases resting on the chapels side
walls, while the obtuse triangles, in the inner bay,
rest in one case on the altar wall and in the other
case on the transverse arch that separates this bay
from the outer bay.
Frescoes in such vaults, which are very com-
mon in the Renaissance culture, normally do not
show narratives as the walls do. The shape makes
such a choice awkward. Instead, they commonly
show a portrait-like series of immobile figures,
often one to a triangle. Frequently they are a set
of four standard holy figures, such as the four
evangelists, and have only a loose link with the
theme of the walls below. Angelicos procedure is
less common, and determined the entire schema
for the walls, even though he himself executed
only two of his eight triangles. In the obtuse tri-
angle over the altar wall, Angelico painted Christ
seated, raising his right hand high and holding a
globe in his left. He gave this figure a position in
the chapel that can dominate the viewer entering
the space. Crowds of angels flank him, extending
ri t. + Fra Angelico, Prophets (detail of Fig. 12)
Image not available
to the narrow far corners of the triangle, where in
each case on angel blows a trumpet.
The second and last triangle that Angelico
painted is at Christs left, the observers right
(Fig. 13). An inscription at its base announces
that it shows prophets (such inscriptions appear
in all the remaining six triangles also, those
painted by Signorelli). The prophets at the front
are identifiable, Aaron with his rod (even though
he is not a prophet in a strict sense) and Moses
with his two tablets; David is behind them. The
rest of the prophets are generic figures. They cer-
tainly include the four major prophets, and we
duly seein the figure beside David and the
three in the next rowthree graybeards, who
would then be Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, and
one younger figure, matching the standard image
of Daniel. The eight in the back cannot be
assigned names. The inclusion of four younger
figures with the four graybeards there is not cus-
tomary, and may suggest that no identifications
were intended. The one unusual inclusion is
John the Baptist, sharing the front row with
Moses and Aaron. Being a figure of the New
Testament, John is not commonly represented in
any set of prophets, but a special reason for his
inclusion here will appear soon.
33
What sense are we to make of these two trian-
gles of figures? The most widely circulated book
in English about Angelico labels them as Christ
in Glory (sometimes in Majesty with Angels)
and Prophets (sometimes Sixteen Prophets)
without further reference.
34
One can expect such
brief labels in captions of illustrations and head-
ings of catalogue entries, but here these are the
only descriptions of the themes of the frescoes in
the text of the book as well. Yet in this culture
there is no established church theme of sixteen
prophets, and none of Christ in majesty alone
with angels. If this is a novel subject, it would call
for comment. The most widely circulated book
in Italian uses the same titles, again without com-
ment.
35
An older, standard German book did the
same for the prophets, but did provide a more
meaningful title for the other triangle, calling it
Christ as Judge of the World.
36
If simply regarded as labels, these titles are only
baffling. If taken more seriously, they can pro-
duce misunderstanding. Another intelligent
writer on Angelico, also using the same names,
then finds that the paintings are nothing more
than ecclesiastical decoration, religious litera-
ture.
37
This dubious conclusion might have
been avoided if the writer had had available not
simply such identities for the pictures, as holy
men in rows or Christ with angels, but the role
of the works in the great theme in which they
are integral parts.
In a standard procedure, one may seek to
understand these images by locating similar
works of nearby dates and localities, which in the
present case leads readily to a previous work by
Angelico. This easily solves the puzzle, in a way
that has been understood without difficulty in
the literature devoted not to monographs on the
artist but to the chapel. The group of Christ with
angels appears in an identical way as a portion of
Angelicos Last Judgment panel in Florence of
about 1430 (Fig. 11). In the center at the top we
find the same Blessing Christ on a cloud with
angels around him, two of whom at the base
blow trumpets. Only some gestures differ, a vari-
ation accepted in the period in images of the
same theme. That point is confirmed in another,
later Last Judgment by Angelico (in Berlin, Fig.
14), where the gestures are the same as in Orvi-
eto. Christ again lifts his right arm and lowers his
left. Conversely, some details in this image vary
from motifs found in common in the two other
versions cited, in Orvieto and Florence. Only
one detail in Orvieto, the globe, does not recur.
Thus the fresco does not reflect specific condi-
tions or cults of the town, but church-wide for-
mulations of this subject.
r i:xxi xt + nr r r r s cor s
This match with the other paintings by the
artist provides the answer to the puzzle about the
theme. There is no need to claim a novel sub-
jecta Christ with Angels, as the books call
the work. The triangle simply shows one seg-
ment of a Last Judgment. The match with the
figures in the other Last Judgments extends
another earlier finding, that the large theme in
Orvieto is the Last Judgment, based on its ulti-
mate formulation, completed by Signorelli. All
this tells us that this formulation was already set-
tled in June 1447, when the contract was drawn
up (naming no subject) and Angelico started to
paint these triangles.
So it will not be a surprise that the same
applies to the Sixteen Prophets in the adjacent
triangle by Angelico. The same theme of seated
prophets appears in the other Last Judgment pan-
els by Angelico; the prophets sit at Christs left
(our right), just as the prophet triangle in Orvieto
is to the right of the Christ triangle. The number
of prophets is different, but these all include the
ri t. + Fra Angelico, Last Judgment. Berlin, Gemldegalerie
Image not available
John the Baptist, that less usual prophet, each
time at the front left, hands in prayer, turning to
look at Christ. What seemed odd in the trian-
gleJohns separateness from the othersis
now clear. As he looks at Christ, the focus of
the prophet triangle is outside its frame. (In the
two panel paintings of Last Judgments, not
all the men seated with John are specifically
prophets; they are holy men of various kinds.
The leading prophets seen in the triangle do
recur, and the major difference is that the generic
ones do not reappear, being replaced by impor-
tant saints of other kinds.
38
It will be argued that
the grand scale of Orvieto permitted all types of
holy people, including prophets, to get more
representatives.)
We can now see why the reliable and promi-
nent writers on Angelico gave the triangles mis-
leading titles. Their failure to note that the
images are parts of a larger image, not unique
separate figurations but parts of a usual one,
might at first seem forgivable in a literal way.
They took titles only from what they directly
saw, not from what is implicated. However, they
took the opposite, and more helpful, approach in
other casesfor instance, telling us that a panel
in Turin is part of a larger set. What evidently
distinguished the case of the triangles, and made
the method fail its task of explanation, was the
heavy framing system. The triangles have triple
frames, the middle segment being three-dimen-
sional. They give everything inside a powerful
effect of completeness, at least in the case of the
Christ. The prophets, with their tilt to one side,
lack such apparent harmony. What is happening,
and what was not addressed, is that the subject
matter jumps the frame. John and his associates
are assistant witnesses when Christ judges the
world (Fig. 12). We the viewers receive two
messages that conflict. One from the frames is
divisive, the other, from the theme, is unifying.
If we know what the theme is, as the original
audience certainly did, it will be legible here for
us and we can discount the frame. If we have lost
that popular knowledge, we can come to the
wrong conclusion.
It does seem odd to run a frame through the
middle of a figurative image, but there was much
precedent for doing so. Our ability to read past the
frame when we know the theme may lead us to
assume that this situation is less common than it
actually is. Near Orvieto, a conspicuous instance is
the fresco cycle by Barna in San Gimignano. (It is
in the same church with a Last Judgment already
cited, the one large such image nearest in date pre-
ceding the Orvieto cycle.) The many scenes are
divided by painted frames that produce internal
fields, generally of the same size, like a checker-
board whose units were set up before the stories
were determined. There are some special excep-
tions, and in one of them double width is assigned
to a story: Christs entry into Jerusalem. Yet the
usual painted frame appears, with the result that
the left and right parts of the procession are sliced
apart. At the left of the frame, Christ rides in; and
at its right, citizens greet him (Figs. 15 and 16). No
one has trouble with this; it is understood as a too
mechanical application of the routine system.
Other cultures show the same thing, even with
three-dimensional frames, again with no loss of
clear story-telling.
39
Stories can also ignore an architectural fact in
quite a different way, by continuing one scene
from one wall to another at right angles, in a
room. In frescoes in central Italy at this time, the
Prato Cathedral cycle by Fra Filippo Lippi illus-
trates this arrangement neatly. In one corner,
killers stone Saint Stephen, and the stones must
be thought of as taking a diagonal trajectory from
the killers on one wall through our space to the
saint on the other. In another corner, John the
Baptists killer hands his severed head across the
diagonal space to Salome (Fig. 17).
40
This device
can also be found in other cultures and seems to
give no trouble.
41
Yet the imagery here on the Orvieto vault
may be unprecedented, because it uses both these
divisive factors at once. Between Christ and the
Baptist we must jump over a frame and turn a
corner too, though not a right angle. The vault
structure imposes this result. Before Angelico,
painters in this culture seem always to bow to the
power of such frames by giving such triangles
only autonomous themes, usually single figures.
Angelico was under pressure to use the vaults as
parts of his unified theme, as a result of the deci-
sion to choose a Last Judgment. A basic problem
was the window at the center of the altar wall.
This central position traditionally belongs to the
Judging Christ, and to keep him at the center the
only solution, a strange one, was to push him up
into the vault. Angelico presented this answer
with grace. He then does not try to hide the way
the frames interrupt the figuration, which would
have been futile in the case of such massive
forms. Instead, he enriches them with particu-
larly active patterns, including human heads in
rows, flowers, and complex geometries in per-
spective. Their very different language helps us
to retain the unity of the two fields on either
side, whose imagery is identical in the two trian-
gles. They are like stanzas in a narrative poem,
separated by a recurrent refrain. The refrain in no
way blocks the continuation of the story from
the stanza preceding to the one following. The
most basic way in which the narrative is affirmed,
leaving us undisturbed by the barriers, is the
commitment to the traditional theme, which the
viewer knows before entering the chapel. It has
never been troublesome for anyone in the
chapel, including recent writers. The problem
comes when we use only photographs, which
can only show segments, are almost always of
one plane, and tend to use the frames as handy
ri t. + Barna, Christs Entry into Jerusalem, left half. San
Gimignano, Collegiata
ri t. +o Barna, Christs Entry into Jerusalem, right half. San
Gimignano, Collegiata
Image not available Image not available
edges of each photograph. We cannot then look
past the frames to anything, and we lose the
effect and the theme.
The frame between Christ and the prophets is
not the only one that viewers are required to
jump. They must do this in this vault four times,
at both sides of each of four triangles. They must
do so three more times at the bases of the vault as
it rests on the three walls. On the wall level, they
must turn two right angles. The outer bay calls
for further similar shifts. Even observers who
dealt readily with the vaults have at times gone
astray among these further complexities in the
large scenes of the walls. They have called the
framed scenes independent narratives, and indeed
their unity is less obvious than that of the vault.
Plainly Angelico had to have a clear plan for all
this. He had at his disposal a normal method of
the period for doing sowith drawings. A draw-
ing of the vault alone, as it has been supposed is
described in the contract, would not help at all.
The drawing of half the chapel, vault and
walls, would. Such a general drawing would also
be called for not only by the patrons desire to see
what they would get, and by later artists need to
understand how the project had been set up, but
simply by conventions of the period, as briefly
suggested above.
42
These called for general draw-
ings of iconographic wholes as a starting point,
even when there were no complications about
frames (as usually there were not). The apparent
puzzle that only half the chapel was shown will
be related below to an argument that the inner
half is an entire scene, and the outer half an
optional extension from it.
Much about the gavantone must remain a mys-
tery, but a fair amount can be reconstructed.
Some points will emerge later from seeing what
Signorelli later painted on the walls in question,
in the inner bay. It will be proposed that the
drawing had extended beyond the main large
fields on the walls to the wainscot below, where
Signorellis portrait heads appear. The evidence
that one person among them, Dante, was already
specified by Angelico may be a surprising shift
from previous understanding.
The payment document for the gavantone,
which has not been analyzed, tells us several
things. Item, pay Iacomo di Cartari [a cartaro is a
dealer in paper] for a gavantone, bought from him
and given to the master painter to make a draw-
ing. It cost sixteen soldi.
43
To buy only one
piece of paper is peculiar. It must have been
unusual paper, different from what would be
normally be purchased. That fits the price
more than one unskilled workers days pay, and
almost as much as that of a skilled one
44
and
possibly seventy-five times the price of a normal
piece of paper.
45
r i:xxi xt + nr r r r s cor s ;
ri t. +; Fra Filippo Lippi, Martyrdom of the Baptist,
detail of left corner. Prato, Cathedral
Image not available
The high cost implies special quality and also
suggests paper of large size. That fits the term
gavantone, the earlier appearances of which in the
Orvieto records have reasonably been related to
the parchments still on file there. Mills at the
period produced paper in standard sizes up to 30
by 20 inches, while one of the Orvieto parch-
ments is 50 by 36. In one famous case in the
period, a mill had an order to produce much
larger sheets for an edition of a print, a situation
that would not apply here.
46
The usual method of
getting a larger surface was to glue sheets together
skillfully. Four sheets of the maximum standard
size so glued would provide a surface like that of
the parchments earlier and probably be what
Angelico needed for the indicated purpose.
The next step in such planning would be to
draw small elements, mainly figures, on paper of
ordinary size. Fortunately two drawings survive
that all agree relate to the planning of the triangle
with Christ.
47
Both, now in museums in Chan-
tilly and Dresden, once belonged to the same
owner, and both are drawn on both sides, recto
and verso. They have a total of nine separate
images. The draftsman, again by common con-
sent, was Angelicos chief assistant on the project,
Benozzo Gozzoli. One of the nine imagesa
naked athletic youth moving briskly with a
lionclearly has a function that is not connected
with Orvieto; it occupies all of the Dresden
verso. As recently demonstrated, the youth was
copied from a sarcophagus then in Rome, mak-
ing this one of the earliest firm cases in the
Renaissance of copying from classical figures.
48
Benozzo is only known to have been in Rome at
one phase of his life, while working for Angelico
just before their one summer in Orvieto, and that
tends to support a date for the drawing close to
the Orvieto project. A figure at the top on the
recto of the Dresden sheet, a naked putto, was
meant, according to one reasonable suggestion,
as a motif in a painted frame of a fresco. It is quite
similar to such figures in a later work by
Benozzo.
49
Because it is agreed that the figure in
the drawing is early, the natural inference is that
it was intended for a similar frame, such as the
ones in Orvieto. The Orvieto frames certainly
received elaborate attention, even if they do not,
as finally painted, include such figures. A third
figure, occupying all of Chantilly recto, is a por-
trait, to be discussed shortly.
The other six all involve a Blessing Christ and
angels. The most prominent shows the Christ
seated with right arm high as he holds a globe in
his left hand. These details correspond only to
ri t. + Benozzo Gozzoli, sheet of drawings. Chantilly,
Muse Cond, verso
Image not available
the Christ in Orvieto, and to none of Angelicos
other variant Christs. In the drawing Christ cups
the globe firmly in his palm (Fig. 18), but in the
fresco the globe rests on Christs knee a bit inse-
curely, held loosely from above by his fingers
(Fig. 19). The difference is that the drawing was
done from the living model, and so the prop was
held in a practical this-worldly fashion. The face
of Christ is different in the drawing and in the
fresco in a similar way. The drawing shows
Christ as youthful, certainly because the model
was one of the studio assistants, as was common
in the period.
Writers on the drawings have held that
although the artist of the drawing was the shop
assistant Benozzo, it nevertheless has the quality
of an original creation,
50
but the suggestion that
the master would then, in the fresco, copy from
his assistants idea in the drawing is unsettling.
The solution for some (though they are a minor-
ity) is to deduce that the master let the assistant
Benozzo paint the fresco of Christs head too.
However, the recent cleaning has for most writ-
ers reinforced the impression that the painted
Christ is by Angelico. As a matter of social prac-
tice, it is almost inconceivable that the central
image of the job would be handed to the less
well paid assistant; to think so is to let a hypothe-
sis of style eliminate all other kinds of evidence.
51
An alternative and more complex scenario is that
Angelico made a drawing for his Christ that has
since been lost and that Benozzo admired it and
r i:xxi xt + nr r r r s cor s ,
ri t. +, Fra Angelico, Christ Judging (detail of Fig. 12)
Image not available
here copied it.
52
But this still leaves the puzzle of
the lively original pen work in our drawing by
Benozzo and is an artificial reconstruction of
events.
The factor of the gavantone has not been taken
into account in this debate, and it may allow a
simpler proposal. On the gavantone, the master
would offer a preliminary general image of the
poses of the figures, shown too small to include
full details. The crew chief would next have the
intermediate job of producing various detailed
figures, somewhat larger in scale, using live
models, while perhaps Angelico efficiently did
something else. The master would then use
these studio drawings as aids in his final stage,
the painting. Benozzos fresh drawing can be
thus a live creation without either being created
by him from scratch or implying that he did the
fresco. A rational studio practice is thus here
leaving its traces.
On the drawing, the Christ occupies the mid-
dle of the paper, and the corners show four other
figures, one in each. The usual and reasonable
presumption in such cases is that the drawing in
the middle was done first, on the clean paper
that is, that the draftsman would not begin in a
corner. Here, at the lower right, an angel looks
down and blows a trumpet; it corresponds to the
one in the frescoed triangle of Christ, at the
lower right (Fig. 12). While the figure is identical
in many details, such as the left leg thrust for-
ward, the head is more upright in the painting.
The motif in the drawing of leaning forward
over the wakening souls is marvelously alive, but
in the painting might have seemed to disconnect
it from the other angels. The framing gives the
ri t. :o Dome with Last Judgment mosaic. Florence, Baptistery
Image not available
relation to the latter the chief weight. In the
upper right corner of the drawing, a kneeling
angel is the evident model of three slightly varied
ones in the fresco, just above the trumpeter men-
tioned. They differ in that the drawing includes
legs for the angel, giving the model who was
posing a practical support, but these are absent
from the painting. The drawings other figures
also relate to the Last Judgment project in aspects
still to be discussed.
The planning of the Last Judgment project
would of course involve the artists memory of
his panel of the theme of about 1430 (Fig. 11).
53
There was no other recent image of the theme of
any ambition in the geographical region.
54
Angelico in it had naturally already taken into
account powerful older conventions of the sub-
ject. A basic schema seen in the earliest such
works known, of about :.i. 800, was still the
model, along general lines.
55
Here it seems neces-
sary to consider only the phases from around
1300, in the time of Giotto, the earliest artist still
viewed with respect in Angelicos time, and from
the area of central Italy. Just one slightly earlier
image did certainly still loom large, the huge
mosaic in the Baptistery of Florence, and traces
of it are found in the later works.
In that Baptistery, as in all these representa-
tions, the Judging Christ is in the center and
larger than the other figures (Fig. 20). At his side
the trumpeting angels summon the dead to rise
and be judged. This follows the chief source in
Matthew 2425: he will send forth his angels
with a trumpet . . . and they will gather his elect
from the four winds (24:31). Farther to the sides,
more angels carry the objects with which Christ
was tortured, known as symbols of the Passion,
especially the cross. The importance of these to
the Judgment was especially urged by the great
hymn written at this time, the Dies Irae, which
has been part of the liturgy ever since. The sinner
who sings it asks for Christs mercy because it was
with the aim of redeeming us that Christ suffered
on the cross, and that sacrifice ought not to be
vain: You redeemed me, suffering on the cross,
and that sacrifice should not be lost.
On a level below the angels, Christ is also
flanked by Mary on his right and John the Baptist
on his left. Beyond them in turn sit twelve apos-
tles, six on each side, who are part of the judging
court too. Under Christs feet the dead emerge
from their tombs (First Corinthians 15:32, the
trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall arise
incorruptible). We then see them sorted: to the
right of Christ are the saved, or sheep, to his left
are the damned, or goats: he will set the sheep
on his right hand, and the goats on his left . . . he
will say to those on his right hand . . . Come,
take possession of the kingdom . . . he will say to
those on his left hand, Depart from me, accursed
ones, into everlasting fire (Matthew 25:3241).
An angel guides a cluster of the good, in prayer
and many in clerical costume, to a door. Beyond
it, connoting the kingdom of heaven, sit three
bearded patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
each with souls in his lap. All this is evidently an
extrapolation of the story of Lazarus borne away
by angels into Abrahams bosom (Luke 16:22).
There is such a scarcity of Bible texts about
heaven that this one was precious, even if it gives
no visual information about heaven. Still, the
formula with the patriarchs disappears almost
completely from the later images.
On the goat side, we first see a motionless
cluster of weeping souls, which are then hauled,
beyond a small break, farther to our right, into a
hell of rocks where toads, green demons, and
others torture them. A single dominant Satan
presides over the small, nasty creatures. The
Bible contains no basis for any of this kind of
image, which was actually developed in a series
of medieval writings and as early as the eleventh
century was visible in the great Last Judgment
mosaic at Torcello.
The bilateral symmetry never diminishes:
sheep, good, and heaven on the right oppose
goats, evil, and hell on the left. In the Florence
Baptistery and in Angelico, though not always,
the sorting is in two phases. Saved and damned
are motionless below Christ, prayerful or fearful,
in the first stage. It is the moment of judging.
Then, perhaps through a gate, they move out-
ward to their final assignments.
Giottos huge fresco in Padua (1305; Fig. 10),
though far from his home base of Florence, was
certainly well known in the area. The close copy
in the Orvieto region documents that. The Padua
fresco became the second great model, after the
Baptistery. A notable change is that it displaces
the opened tombs from the center, which spot is
needed for a unique motif: the donor presenting
the church to Mary. No doubt for that reason
Mary is absent from her usual place seated at
Christs right, and the Baptist is also omitted from
the matching left place. The tombs and very small
emerging souls are pushed off to the right (the
viewers left).
56
Such amendments to meet occa-
sional special demands are normal in the period.
Giotto also added a vast choir of angels at the very
top, and above it the old-fashioned motif of the
scroll unrolled at the end of the world.
57
Both are
outside the standard scheme, do not affect the
message, and may be adequately explained by the
intrusion of the window.
A change by Giotto that is of more concern
here has to do with the saved and the damned.
Each group is shown not in two phases but in
one, and not the same phase on the two sides.
The saved appear in their early assembling and
praying phase, but not beyond the gate at their
ri t. :+ Attributed to Francesco Traini, Last Judgment. Pisa, Campo Santo
Image not available
destination in paradise. (To be sure, the motif
with Abraham seems to have been obsolescent.)
They do lift slightly up from the ground, or at
least an upper subset of saved with haloes do so,
but that is the end. Conversely, the damned are
shown already inside hell, and we have nothing
about their preliminary assembly. They are very
small in scale compared with the saved, and their
actions are determined by physical force external
to them, as they fall down a fiery chute, are
pulled and hauled, are caught by a noose or tree
limb. The saved are spirits, and their poses if any-
thing negate physical location. This contrast may
be the point of Giottos unique formulation,
which has not been explored in the literature.
The next great model in the Florence context
is from about 1340. It is a fresco of disputed
authorship in the great cemetery or Campo
Santo in Pisa (Fig. 21). In this Judgment, inscrip-
tions on two scrolls show the texts from
Matthew 25 about the assignments of the good
and the evil to the kingdom or to fire, reinforc-
ing the symmetry. In the center the dead emerge,
their tombs not boxes as before but simply square
holes in the ground. Michael, in the middle, sorts
busily and displaces the usual position of the cross
and other Passion symbols. These, however,
reappear overhead, as in some later cases. One
aspect of the symmetry was to remain unique:
Christ judges the goats only, and Mary shows
mercy to the saved for whom justice has no
room. Below Mary, the saved resemble Giottos,
in praying groups and, in the upper rows, haloed.
They include the Baptist, displaced from his
usual position when Mary, his traditional coun-
terpart, was moved to her new role. Below
Christ, the damned again cluster in fear. The
largest novelty in Pisa is that, next to this fresco
showing the entire judgment, there is a second
one of equal size given solely to the scene inside
hell; there is no balancing heaven, making an
extreme unbalance. The shifting approach to the
issue of balance between heaven and hell may be
summarized in the monuments just discussed,
alluding to the five motifs from our left to our
right: (1) the saved in heaven, far left; (2) the
saved assembled, near left; (3) souls emerge from
tombs, center; (4) the damned assemble, near
right; (5) the damned in hell, far right. The Bap-
tistery shows the five symmetrical scenes, Giotto
shows only (2), (3), and (5), and Pisa shows (2),
(3), (4), and (5).
Giottos omission of the final arrival in heaven
(1) and of the early assembly of the damned (4)
forced a complementarity of the early phase of
the saved and the final phase of the damned. In
Pisa, the immense hell forced a complementarity
of the early assembly of the saved and both phases
of damnation. The trend seems to be to offer
violent insistence on the physicality of hell in
contrast to a spaceless heaven of spirits. This is
comparable to Dantes approach. The huge sepa-
rate hell in Pisa was a great success. One hundred
years later it was copied in an engraving, when
most art of its date was dismissed as crude and
obsolete. Angelico took motifs from it in his
panel of 1430. The physical would gain an effect
of totality in Signorelli.
The last of the series, before Angelico, by
Nardo di Cione, is of the 1350s and in the main
church of the Dominicans in Florence, Santa
Maria Novella; Angelico would later paint for this
center of his order. This Last Judgment is in a
transeptal chapel of extra size, and Angelico cer-
tainly knew the work (Fig. 22).
58
The fresco occu-
pies the three walls, giving the center one to the
Judging Christ, assisting saints, and tombs and the
side walls respectively to the saved on our left and
the damned on our right. The formula that would
be followed in Orvieto first emerges here, spread-
ing the theme around the corners.
59
It seems obvi-
ous that when Angelico came to study the big
walls in Orvieto, and thought of a big subject, the
precedent in Florence was available to show how
it would work; it is surprising that the literature
has scarcely considered such a connection.
Nardo had to work around a big window on
the altar wall, like Giotto before him and
Angelico later. The one at Santa Maria Novella
does not reach as high toward the vault as the
one in Orvieto, and thus leaves a bit of wall
above itself to assign to imagery. It received the
Judging Christ, the element that belongs to the
top center, and so Nardo had no need to push
the Christ up into the vault triangle, as Angelico
did later, but assigned it to individual saints, in
the formula standard for vault triangles. The dis-
advantage is that the small space squeezes the
Christ, who is also in darkness over the window,
making the meaning of the three-part imagery
less than obvious. On the two sides of the win-
dow, on this same wall, we work down below
Christ and the angelswith trumpets and sym-
bols of the Passionto the usual sequence. Mary
and the Baptist preside again over the twelve
apostles. Still below, five tiers of assembling saved
and damned are to be seen in the tall, narrow
wall areas available. Among the saved, the top
row are haloed Old Testament patriarchs (Adam,
Eve, Abel, Noah, Moses), but all the others lack
such dignity. They are, however, strongly indi-
vidualized, and at least one is meant to be identi-
fied. This is Dante, to be considered shortly. At
the base, the open tombs are again displaced from
the center (where the window continues) to
both sides. Again they are square holes. Under-
neath the whole, and its frame, the wainscot is
adorned on three walls with a row of twenty
monochrome heads in frames. This is a very early
appearance in a Last Judgment of a formula that
becomes very important in Orvieto, and one of
the heads here gazes upward at the events of the
Judgment; it has plausibly been suggested as a
model for a similar one by Signorelli.
60
The side wall to our right in Nardos Last Judg-
ment is entirely devoted to a rocky hell with
complex subsections, as in Pisa. The difference is
that this one illustrates Dantes Inferno in detail,
starting with Charons boat, which will reappear
in Orvieto (Fig. 49). This use of Dantes text fully
explains his portrait among the blessed. It is being
assumed that Dante described hell accurately, and
such favor to him by God must mean that he is
saved. Dante had already appeared among the
saved in this way in an earlier, large Last Judg-
ment fresco in Florence painted by Giottos shop
in 133840, just after the masters death. In 1395
Giottos biographer Filippo Villani reported that
in the chapel of the Bargello the artist painted
himself, and his contemporary Dante.
61
He does
not mention that this is in a Last Judgment, but
the location he gives, in the chapel, makes that
certain. In the now very damaged work the fig-
ures cannot be identified. The grouping of Dante
and the artist points forward to the appearance of
ri t. :: Nardo di Cione, Last Judgment. Florence, Santa
Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel
Image not available
both Dante and the artist Signorelli in the Orvi-
eto frescoes. There are still other self-portraits in
Last Judgments, as will be discussed. Artists took
advantage of painting the theme to include them-
selves in the favored company.
62
Opposite Hell, the other side wall of the chapel
by Nardo, on our left, presents Heaven (Fig. 23).
Nardo rejects the asymmetry of Pisa, even while
borrowing so much from Pisas emphatic version
of hell. To have an entire wall for heaven brings
us back for the first time in this series to the five-
part symmetry seen in the Baptistery mosaics.
This is what Angelico and Signorelli will follow.
We have both the preliminary and the final
phases of the fate of both sheep and goats.
Nardos heaven does not look at all like the
one in the Baptistery. There is no bosom of
Abraham. The image we are offered here may be
an invention driven by the available vast surface.
Eleven rows of standing saints, with one row of
angels above, dominate the system as a pattern,
but it is not quite as uniform as it first appears.
Again we have spirits and no place. Nine rows
line up holy figures, a saint beside an angel in
endless repetition. The lowest two rows show
only women saints. Yet all this occupies only the
outer thirds of the wall, as in the design of a trip-
tych. The center third shows Christ and Mary
enthroned at the top, the latter as Queen of
Heavena composition taken from the tradition
of the Coronation of the Virgin. Musical angels
are below them, and below them in turn are
unhaloed men and women in slightly smaller
scale. These figures are often overlooked. Their
role is made clear by the single mobile and off-
center element anywhere on this wall, a pair
consisting of a saved soul and an angel guiding
him to join the choir. They enter at a point
slightly lower than the nearby line of standing
saints. This footnote near our eye level, human
and irregular, is the small signal that this wall
relates in a continuum to the altar wall; this is a
soul that has emerged from one of the tombs
there. The two figures are a hinge around the
corner. There is nothing similar on the hell side.
As in Pisa, rocks tightly enclose hells empire.
As is true in Orvieto, so here with Nardo it
usually is not grasped that the three walls com-
prise one quite standard subject, the Last Judg-
ment. In the case of Nardo, each wall has been
assigned a title: Hell, Heaven, and the Last Judg-
ment for the center wall. They are not erro-
neous, yet it is plain that were it not for the
turning of the corners the whole would be
labeled as the Last Judgment, the title given to
the same group of images when found on a flat
surface.
Following these models available to Floren-
tines, Angelicos panel of 1430 (Fig. 11) was also
affected by its odd shape. It appears to have been
the upper part of a benchback (where the priest,
ri t. : Heaven (detail of Fig. 22, left wall)
Image not available
deacon, and subdeacon sat during appropriate
parts of Masses) in the choir of the church of
Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence. Hence, the
panel has a relatively narrow upper half, about 60
percent of the breadth of the wider half below,
roomy enough for the three clerics. Angelico
made this serve him when he used the tradition
of the Judging Christ above and sorted souls
below. The upper part, in the pattern now virtu-
ally fixed, presents the Judge with Mary and the
Baptist and other assisting saints while angels
blow trumpets and hold the cross. The choir of
tiny angels around Christ, a vast quantity with
varied costumes, no doubt alludes to the churchs
dedication to Mary of the Angels. The assisting
saints show a major innovation in that they are
not limited to the twelve apostles. There are thir-
teen on each side (a front row of seven and a
back row of six, the latter neatly visible in the
interstices of the front figures). We are meant to
identify them individually. The range, all male,
includes some patriarchs (Abel, Moses, David)
and founders of monastic orders (Dominic, Fran-
cis), along with a partial set of the apostles. The
change is explained by another change just
below, where Angelico abandoned the system of
haloed figures as leaders of the saved assembly for
a new theme, as we shall see, and so the exiled
haloed figures are relocated to the apostles area.
Throughout this upper half, Angelico shows this
talent for ordering complex message systems
clearly, using brilliant small color units and sim-
plified cubic modeling.
The lower half retains the five segments seen
earlier. The damned side is virtually unchanged
from the pattern seen in Pisa, where the empha-
sis on that side had assumed much authority. In
its outer part, hell is a series of pits, and in the
inner part a cluster of people are violently hauled
and pulled. The center segment is entirely fresh
and inventive. The tombs are little squares, as
before,
63
but in emphatic perspective. In this they
exemplify the new fascination at just this time,
among Florentine artists, with patterned floor
tiles to measure recession. Also new, and not
found elsewhere, is the emptiness of the tombs.
No one is climbing out, as in earlier and also in
later Judgments. There are tomb lids scattered in
disarray, a clue that the dead had emerged and
have departed. They have followed Christs
order to line up on both sides. Angelico asserts
not only rational space, usual enough in his gen-
eration, but also rational time. The scene portrays
a single moment, the judging, not a sequence of
events, with judging preceded by emergence
from the tombs. This visual token of a sense of
modernity seems not to have been explored in
studies of the artist.
On the saved side, the inner segment shows
the good in prayer, as earlier. They kneel and
gaze upward, their heads surrounded by gold rays
identifying them as blessed. They are distinct in
rank from the saints above, who have haloes.
Angels are guiding some of the good souls out-
ward to an area that must be called heaven, since
it is in a segment of the panel complementary to
hell. The identification needs emphasis because it
is quite unlike earlier heavens and is further
divided into two parts. The souls first come to a
flowery meadow, where they dance with their
angel guides in an elliptical ring. As the souls
have rays, the angels have haloes, making the
alternate identities quite clear. This pairing with
angels is Angelicos one inheritance from
Nardos heaven. The elliptical movement is in
perspective. Thus heaven is a physical place like
hell, not a nonplace of spirits, as earlier. This
image of dancers has become world famous, even
while its break with precedent has passed unno-
ticed. No doubt its tie to our world on earth has
aided in its popularity.
The meadow occupies most of heaven, but
another aspect of it can be barely seen in the far
upper corner. An angel and a soul have levitated
and fly through an open gate of a walled city.
Though this is also new, it alludes to a rare dis-
tant tradition. The walled city is labeled as
heaven in some images from the tenth century
onward, most of them not Last Judgments.
64
The
basis is the text of Revelation 21, telling how
after Christs judgment the holy city, New
Jerusalem, is seen coming down out of
Heaven. It needs no sun because God lights it,
and it has gates that never shut. Angelicos city,
matching those details, has conspicuously landed,
again reinforcing the physicality of his heaven.
This two-part heaven has a solid basis in much
older Christian writing. Salvation, according to
early fathers, involved a first phase called para-
dise, which is a garden, and a second called
heaven, the heavenly city of Jerusalem. After an
early treatment by Greek theologians, the idea
appears in the West in an anthem sung at funerals
from the tenth century and still in use.
65
Yet in
Angelicos period there are few visual parallels. A
notable one of about 1425 is in a frescoed Last
Judgment in faraway Abruzzi.
66
Its upper area is
of the usual kind, but the saved below move first
into a garden, where they climb trees and pick
fruits, and then into a walled city. Visually this
closely matches a Florentine fresco not of the
Last Judgment. This is part of the famous cycle at
Santa Maria Novella of the triumph of the
church painted in 1365 by Andrea Bonaiuti.
Again souls in a garden climb trees and eat fruit,
on one side, while on the other side Peter admits
souls to the gate of the heavenly city. Writers
have called this garden a preparation for heaven
rather than heaven, but in either case it is part of
this version of what happens to the saved. How-
ever, no precedent seems to show dancing in the
garden, as Angelico does. It too is validated by at
least one early Greek father, one probably
known to the patron of Angelicos panel. That
patron was the notable scholar Ambrogio Tra-
versari, the ranking cleric of the convent of Santa
Maria degli Angeli. Thereafter, the idea emerges
in an Italian anthem of the fifteenth century,
found in several manuscripts. It tells how a
wheel is formed in heaven of all the saints in that
garden . . . they all dance for love . . . they are
dressed in particolors, white and red. They have
garlands on their heads, they seem young people
of thirty . . . the garlands are all flowered.
67
Yet
neither Angelico nor anyone else repeated this
vision in later Last Judgments, a point that rein-
forces the idea that it had special connections
with Traversari.
68
Angelico thus brought to Orvieto in 1447 a
powerful awareness of the theme of the Last
Judgment. He had offered imaginative innova-
tions while using ancient schemes. It can be pre-
sumed that he now did not freeze his formulas
but let them interact with the new given of the
chapels vast walls. Whatever plans he had did
not come to fruition, but clues about his project
are fortunately much more accessible than the
studies indicate. Indeed, the studies have recog-
nized hardly any clues to it.
After Orvieto, Angelico painted three more
Last Judgments on small panels. The latest of
these, that of 1450, is of slight concern here.
69
Perhaps its only relevance is in its heavy use of
inscriptions, which include the text about sheep
and goats used earlier in Pisa. It further quotes
the Old Testament text (Joel 3:2) that was the
standard citation for a prophecy of the Judgment,
in which the Lord says he will gather all nations
into the valley of Josaphat. This validates the
common use of that name for the places where
the sheep and goats assemble, and it will be
adopted here.
All scholars assign the other two small panels
to Angelicos period of work in Rome around
1447, which is close to the moment when he
went from there to spend a summer in Orvieto.
Both are commonly considered to be in part by
assistants. If they antedate the summer trip,
Angelico would by a neat coincidence have
found the walls there most suitable for a theme
he had been working on. It is more plausible,
however, that the small panels are offshoots of
the trip and utilized his planning and thought for
the big project.
The larger of the two (Berlin; Fig. 14) is a trip-
tych, but it has been plausibly argued that its
three panels have been sawn apart and that it was
first a single surface.
70
Some figures at the edges
have faces that are cut, which is not likely in the
artists practice. When Angelico let his scenes
jump over frames, it is clear that he left comfort-
able open space next to them. In the Berlin
panel, most motifs are standard. Christs left hand
is the most notable divergence. It neither dangles
(as in the earlier benchback panel) nor holds a
globe (as in the Orvieto triangle) or a book (as in
the other small panel, still to be considered), nor
does it show fingers widely splayed, as in the lat-
est Josaphat panel. This Christ holds his hand
out, lifting it a bit at the wrist and showing the
palm; all the fingers, but not the thumb, are par-
allel and touch. This hand is the only detail that
finds Angelico making a change in every one of
the five versions. The reason can be understood
through his approach to the great theme of Judg-
ment. With symmetry and clarity, he sets before
us the total contrast of good and evil, but while
these two forces are balanced neatly at left and
right in the lower half, the upper half is entirely
about the good. The saints flank Christ on both
sides. In this upper half, evil is involved only at
one small point, Christs condemnation of the
evil with his left hand. That makes it a problem
to show this concern, and Angelico apparently
never found a solution that satisfied him in all
these attempts.
It is not surprising, then, that Christs left turns
up one more time, as an independent study, on
the Chantilly drawing (Fig. 18). This version is
closest to the one on the Berlin panel, different
only in being parallel to the front plane rather
than in perspective. That difference may reason-
ably be attributed to the difference in the prob-
lem of working out the form by itself on the
paper and the problem of incorporating it into
the dramatic action in the painting. (Similar vari-
ations were suggested earlier for other motifs on
the same drawing.)
The deduction about the drawing would then
be that, after its use for several motifs in the
Orvieto triangle, it was retained when Angelico
went back to Rome at the end of the summer.
Such retention in the artists file would be nor-
mal in relation to likely returns to the same
theme. The sheet then duly was drawn upon
again when the scheme was being considered for
ri t. : Ascent to Heaven (detail of Fig. 14)
Image not available
still another variant painting. This scenario is
confirmed by still another figure on the Chantilly
drawing, heretofore not mentioned, and also by a
close variant of it on the Dresden drawing. These
are alternate drafts for a standing angel, once seen
in a formal dalmatic costume like a deacon and
once in a generic robe. (Angels commonly wear
dalmatics when functioning like deacons as assis-
tants in ceremonies.) The former figure holds
two attributes. The latter has none, but positions
his hands formally, the right being at elbow
height and the left holding the robe somewhat
lower. The Berlin panel shows an angel blending
these two options, with a dalmatic but with
hands in the latter position. This is a major cen-
tral figure in the panel, the angel holding the
cross, grasping it in just this way. This figure
appears in no other versions. This survey of the
artists Last Judgments has now accounted for all
the separate images on the two drawings, except
one to be discussed shortly.
The Berlin panel differs from the earlier
benchback version in that the upper segment is
just as wide as the lower one. More space
becomes available, above hell and above heaven.
It is used above hell merely to add more saints
and angels in Christs court. The space above
heaven is not given a matching treatment, but
offers an innovation. The dance seen in the ear-
lier panel is revised to become vertical (Fig. 24).
No longer on the meadow, it spirals up a hill, the
top edge of which matches the mountain of hell
opposite. It then moves into the air, and the
saints finally fly toward a tiny structure, again the
heavenly Jerusalem.
That souls going to heaven should move
upward seems so obvious to us, as it was to Plato
(Republic 10.614), that it needs no explanation,
and this image has not been given any. Yet
before this it had not been seen. It evolves from
the meadow dance, which had first given heaven
a physical place. From a place one can go up, and
Angelico choreographed both kinds of dance. It
is not impossible that this small panel marked the
invention of the vertical one, but one may doubt
that, because it is a variant (partly by assistants) of
this Orvieto project. Thus it might well have
been projected in that major plan, and so
recorded in the gavantone. That view is consistent
with the recurrence of the upward flight, for the
first time, in Signorellis Orvieto fresco, designed
with knowledge of the gavantone. Otherwise Sig-
norelli would have reinvented it, by a remarkable
coincidence.
In this context an explanation also becomes
available of how Angelico would have been
stimulated to invent the vertical flight, over and
above its being a logical idea. This involves going
back to the moment when Angelico inspected
the chapel and proposed the Last Judgment as its
theme. At once the allocation of the themes
standard segments would be the question. The
five-part schema of the lower half of the standard
treatment might seem to fit nicely, assigning the
central area with the tombs to the altar wall, the
two assembling scenes of the sheep and goats to
the side walls of the inner bay, just around the
corners from the altar wall, and finally the entries
into heaven and hell to the side walls of the outer
bay (Figs. 25, 26, and 27; see also Fig. 68, scheme
of entrance wall).
Fifty years later Signorelli realized that imagery
for the three central segments, but did not put
heaven and hell in the outer bay. It will be
argued later that Angelico similarly had not pro-
posed to put them there, but instead to use the
walls of the outer bay for a theme separate from
the Last Judgment. Precedent for such a variance
was in the Baptistery of Florence and elsewhere.
The outer bay may have seemed too far away
from the basic focus on the Judging Christ. On
Angelicos benchback, one can readily make the
connection between the judging, top and center,
and the entries into heaven and hell, at the sides
below; they are directly beneath the Christ, who
determines all that is happening. In the vastly
larger chapel, the outer bay walls are seven
meters away from the judging Christ in the vault
above the altar. This may have seemed to leave
the cause-and-effect relationship unclear.
Whether for that reason or not, Signorelli
painted the entries into heaven and hell in a new
position, close under Christ. The sheep and goats
assembling on his side walls in the inner bay do
not turn outward to move toward heaven and
hell, as in all the earlier Judgments. They turn
back the opposite way and move inward toward
the center, ready for the final goals there.
However, to place the entries in the middle
under Christ, on the altar wall, introduces a sep-
arate problem: the big window, the same that
had forced the shift of the Judging Christ up into
the vault. The wall surface behind the altar is
reduced to two tall, narrow surfaces beside the
windowthe only space available for the entries
into heaven and hell if they are to be assigned to
this part of the fresco cycle at all. In the case of
the saved, Signorelli indeed placed them on the
tall, narrow wall to the left of the window
(Christs right, the good side) and, not to our
surprise at this point, shows them rising up,
helped by angels. But this is just the idea seen
fifty years earlier in Angelicos panel. The natural
inference is that the shape of the wall surface had
induced this invention in Angelicos plan for
Orvieto, repeated then in his panel and in Sig-
norelli as hypothesized. To be sure, Signorellis
imagery in detail is quite unlike Angelicos on
the panel; there is no spiral dance, but a simpler
lifting action. If we had only these two images in
isolation, as in photographs, one could deny
them any connection. But that is not easy when
they are the work of two artists who worked on
the same project, the younger being aware of the
work of the older.
Signorellis adaptation allows us to say that
Angelico had invented this idea. This conclusion
derives from the previous conclusion, that
Angelicos gavantone extended down from the
vault to the walls. That was based on the docu-
mentary report that it did so, and on the observa-
tion that it would be the reasonable thing. It has
now become reasonable to go one more step, to
see, in part, what the gavantone showed. Angelico
ri t. :o Scheme of the left wall, after Vischer ri t. : Scheme of the altar wall, after Vischer
had placed the way to heaven on the tall wall
space on the altar wall, and made the souls rise
upward, probably in the dance he showed in the
Berlin panel. His innovation, like most good
ideas, was effective for several distinct reasons,
solving several problems. It makes heaven accept-
able in the vehicle of the then very modern paint-
ing style of physical space; it works with a natural
notion of getting to heaven by going up; and it
fits the shape of this part of the chapel wall so nat-
urally that it might seem to be just what the
painter wanted.
Although Angelicos imagery of the saved
souls rising apparently has no parallel in his time,
it does have a fascinating analogue. Rogier van
der Weydens Last Judgment in Beaune shows
the usual horizontal groups of saved and damned,
but there is also a vertical factor. The two verses
in which Christ tells the saved to come to him
and the damned to depart appear inscribed on
the panel beside the seated Christ, and they are
written vertically, the words to the saved work-
ing their way upward on Christs right and those
to the damned working down on his left.
Rogiers work seems to be of just about the same
years as Angelicos gavantone and his subsequent
Judgment panels discussed above. Not long after-
ward, Rogier visited Italy and came under
Angelicos influence, making it tempting to
argue that the work in Beaune might be a little
later than is usually thought, and that it echoes
Angelicos inventive imagery. However, the idea
of the vertical, a grand and simple one, may also
have developed independently in both artists.
Should we also imagine that Angelico showed
the damned moving vertically downward? There
is no evidence about them, and we can only
draw inferences about this and other nearby parts
of his design in a general way.
The way to hell surely occupied the matching
tall, narrow wall on the other side of the same
window. He placed the tombs at the base, in the
center, in all his panels of the theme before and
after working in Orvieto, and would presumably
have done so there as well. The assemblies of
sheep and goats at Josaphat would be around the
corner on the two side walls of the inner bay,
where Signorelli places them, and as they are also
placed in all Angelicos panels. As to the vault,
Angelicos two painted triangles, of Christ judg-
ing and the prophets to his left, would necessarily
be continued with apostles to his right, as they
are in Signorelli. The assignment of the fourth
triangle to the symbols of the Passion, as in Sig-
norelli, is hard to doubt, because no other appro-
priate place for this essential element is available.
A few more detailed aspects can be deter-
mined with some precision. Self-portraits of
artists had an old tradition in Last Judgments (see
note 62). Giottos in Florence was cited by an
early writer, and the Orvieto faade sculpture
very likely contains one by Maitani, shown with
assistant sculptors. Jumping ahead, Signorelli
painted himself in the cycle and showed
Angelico beside him (Fig. 28). That novelty
might be viewed as a courteous gesture toward
his distinguished predecessor, whose ideas he
ri t. :; Scheme of the right wall, after Vischer
Image not available
used, but the question of its inclusion has hardly
been explored; it seems to be taken for granted
on the basis of the power of its simple presence.
In view of the older tradition, it might well be
that Angelico portrayed himself on the gavantone
and that this detail was reused by Signorelli.
There is surprising independent support for
this notion. The sheet of drawings in Chantilly
includes one further image not yet discussed, a
portrait of a monk or friar (Fig. 29) that fills the
whole of the recto. When Bernard Berenson
published it, he suggested that it is a portrait of
Angelico, an idea that later scholars have
reported neutrally.
71
This has never been possible
to confirm or refute, and the proposal cannot be
definitely proved, but it is striking that the place
and date of the sheet of drawings is Orvieto 1447,
and its other images are in most cases tryouts for
details of the chapel frescoes. The draftsman,
Benozzo, was in contact there with just one friar
known to us, Angelico, and if he met others the
contact would have been lesser. In planning the
cycle, the idea of including Angelicos portrait
would certainly have arisen because of the tradi-
tion, a point that has not been factored in. To do
so would call for a portrait of him just like this,
72
which would then be transferred to the gavantone
and thence to Signorelli.
Benozzo produced, twelve years later, a
famous self-portrait in the background of his
most successful fresco cycle, the chapel in the
Medici Palace in Florence. In surveys of the his-
tory of self-portraits, this is presented as one of
the rare earliest ones preserved and is perhaps the
first to use a formula popular afterward for its
location in a scene.
73
If Benozzo had earlier
assisted with the self-portrait of his awe-inspiring
master, Angelico, this development would be
more readily understood.
In Signorellis complete project, the wainscot
under the big scenes shows a row of heads in
frames surrounded by little scenes from the
poems of Dante and others. These will be dis-
cussed in detail at a later point, and it will be
indicated that the scenes can hardly have been
part of Angelicos plan. The row of heads, how-
ever, had an older precedent in Nardos fresco
cycle, the one from which Angelico drew most
as to organization. One of Signorellis heads
recalls one of Nardos quite closely, by gazing at
the scene above him; this has been rightly
observed by San Juan.
74
The reasonable objection
has been raised that Signorelli would hardly have
been attentive to the work of Nardo, which by
his time seemed obsolete.
75
The conflict between
the two good arguments is solved if we posit an
intermediate similar head by Angelico, who was
certainly interested in Nardo and as certainly was
noticed by Signorelli. This would again imply its
presence on the gavantone.
ri t. : Self-portrait of Signorelli with Fra Angelico
(detail of Fig. 78)
Image not available
Rows of heads in the borders of frescoes were
common and appeared in two types. Often they
are decorative, as in the frames around Angelicos
triangles, and Nardos monochrome heads also
seem to have been anonymous in this way. Other
such rows were portraits of important people
related to the theme of the work; Angelico had
produced such a major set in the wainscot under
his large Crucifixion at San Marco in Florence, in
the friars chapter house. It shows the most
notable Dominicans of the past, an imagery that
had a long history already in various monastic
orders. Sometimes it had appeared in wainscots,
sometimes in chapter houses; Angelico seems to
have been the first to combine both patterns.
With all those precedents, it would have been
natural for him to prepare such a set of heads in
Orvieto, then executed by Signorelli.
Of the heads executed by Signorelli, one, that
of Dante, stands out because it alone can be iden-
tified without question as a known individual (Fig.
51). This brings to mind that Dante had already
appeared in Last Judgments, both in Giottos in
Florence (where he is grouped with a self-portrait)
and in Nardos, the two representations of the
theme best known to Angelico. They both
showed Dante among the blessed, for a reason
suggested earlier: his authentic report on hell (rep-
resented by Nardo in the way he described it) and
heaven (where he must have gone when he died).
Angelico would then logically have included him
too, and Signorelli after that. But one of these last
two demoted Dante from paradise to the wain-
scot, which seems odd.
It is Benozzo Gozzoli again who may help to
explain this move. After he had worked with
Angelico as an assistant, his first large independ-
ent project came in 1452, in the small town of
Montefalco in southern Umbria not far from
Orvieto. It is a Life of Saint Francis in the local
Franciscan churchs apse. The scene of Francis
receiving the stigmata is in the vault and
uniquely occupies two of its triangles. Christ flies
as a seraph in one, while Francis kneels in the
other, and rays jump the frame between them.
This is the same device Benozzo had known as
Angelicos assistant in the Orvieto vault, and it
shows that he retained that admiring memory. In
the wainscot below is a series of portraits of emi-
nent Franciscans, in the standard way, but that is
oddly interrupted in the exact center by three
portraits not connected with Franciscans at all,
and without known precedent in such a context
(Fig. 30). Two of them, Giotto and Petrarch,
may be put aside for the moment. The third is
ri t. :, Benozzo Gozzoli, Portrait of a Friar, drawing.
Image not available
Dante, in his earliest appearance in a wainscot set
of portraits, followed by Signorellis as the sec-
ond. Because both artists were familiar with
Angelicos Orvieto project, it seems likely that it
is their common source, especially since Dante
would be a natural inclusion in it. It can presum-
ably be discounted that the two made the choice
by coincidence or that Signorelli noticed the
detail in Montefalco, the only alternative
options. The inference is that Angelico had
demoted Dante to the wainscot (where Benozzo
shows him); why he did so may be explored in
due course.
Angelicos project as he drew it can thus be
reconstructed in a broad way and in various
details, something that has not been done
because its existence has not been considered.
His drawing is known to have covered just half
the chapel, its inner bay, comprising that bays
vault, three walls, and, it can now be added, its
wainscot. One result is that Angelico was able to
include every standard factor of Last Judgments
while covering the inner bay only. That can
explain why he made a drawing only of this half
when he needed a layout to begin painting and
to show the client. It also fits the fact that scaf-
folding for him was set up only in the inner bay,
as recorded in documents to be reported shortly.
Nothing in the above offers clues about any
ideas Angelico may have had for the two side
walls of the outer bay, but he must have thought
about these spaces. As mentioned briefly above,
some earlier Last Judgments combined the theme
in the same visual area with quite different
images. Besides the Florence Baptistery, Giottos
Arena Chapel is a striking case: the famous narra-
tive of Mary and Christ is on the side walls near
the Judgment on the end.
ri t. o Benozzo Gozzoli, Petrarch, Dante, and Giotto. Montefalco, San Francesco, choir, wainscot
Image not available
A plausible clue survives, in Angelicos case, in
a work not so far discussed. This is the other
small panel of the Last Judgment besides the one
in Berlin (Fig. 14). All commentators believe that
this second one (Rome; Fig. 31) is of around the
same time as the Orvieto trip.
76
Again it is most
plausible to assign it to a point just after the trip,
rather than just before, and that would make it an
offshoot of the Orvieto plans. This Rome panel is
a true, small folding triptych. The center panel
shows standard elements of the Last Judgment,
including the assembling of the sheep and the
goats, but it omits the final scenes in heaven and
hell (as we shall see Orvieto also did in the end).
The side panels have instead Christs Ascension
and the Pentecost, totally separate topics, which
Angelico seems never to have painted before.
Both are themes calling for vertical emphasis,
with Christ ascending over the disciples and with
the two spaces in the Pentecost story, upstairs
and down, reflecting the formula for that theme
in Angelicos tradition. It had been most striking
in the complex chapter house frescoes of the
Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella, by
Andrea Bonaiuti, of 1365, another segment of
which was mentioned earlier.
These themes are so lacking in association
with the Last Judgment that it has been proposed
that the two side panels did not originally accom-
pany the central Judgment, but most students
ri t. + Fra Angelico, Last Judgment, Ascension, and Pentecost. Rome, Galleria Nazionale
Image not available
accept them. The new point, that the triptych is
an offshoot of the Orvieto plan, now permits
the beginning of an explanation. In Rome, the
Judgment is puzzlingly flanked by these two
events. In Orvieto, the Judgment was flanked
by two open spaces calling for images in a large
high space. To be sure, if we hypothesize that
Angelicos idea for Orvieto was to choose these
two scenes as he then did in Rome, the prob-
lem is only shifted: why did he pick them for
Orvieto?
The texts about the Ascension and Pentecost
are adjacent in the New Testament (Acts 1 and 2)
and thus in long cycles about Christ, such as
Giottos Arena Chapel. That still does not attach
them to the Last Judgment. Such an attachment
does appear in a popular illustrated narrative
cycle of the time, the Biblia Pauperum.
77
That
cycle selects forty themes connected with the
Gospels as of the greatest significance, and near
the end it shows in sequence the Ascension, Pen-
tecost, the Coronation of the Virgin, and the Last
Judgment, followed by only one last image, the
eternal rest of the soul. The Last Judgment is sub-
divided here into three aspects: the judging, the
damned pulled toward hell, and the saved in
Christs bosom, recalling Abrahams in earlier
imagery of heaven. This is a rare case of includ-
ing the Judgment in any temporal series. The one
scene of these four in sequence that is absent
from Angelicos triptych is the Coronation. That
scene had no visual presence in the chapel, unless
its connection with the Assumption is treated as
such, because these two contiguous events are
both celebrated on the same feast day. In that
case, the extension to additional related images
preceding the Judgment and the Coronation
would lead at once to the Pentecost and the
Ascension. In this way the chapel would, after
all, have frescoed stories that relate to its statue of
the Assumpta. However, the omission of these
two scenes from the final paintings again evokes
the slight concern with the statue.
Angelico and his three assistants received their
full pay for the summer in September 1447 and
went back to Rome.
78
They never returned, but
painting activity continued in the chapel with no
break for another year, a circumstance that is
almost always overlooked. The local master,
Pietro, who had been added to the crew in July,
of course did not leave; expenditures for painting
materials are recorded at short intervals until the
following June. In January, a time when fresco
work normally ceased because of freezing
weather, there is a payment for coal for the
painter who is painting in the new chapel, indi-
cating that there was concern to continue. Pre-
sumably there was a brazier. A large expenditure
is for scaffolding, showing that the earlier scaf-
folding for Angelico had not filled the chapel.
The scale of the new scaffolding indicates that it
was for the entire outer bay. Most of the records
refer simply to the painter, but some give his
name as Pietro di Nicola. In June 1448 he was
approaching the end of his contract to work for a
year and was paid everything he was owed, and
there was discussion whether to rehire him.
79
The decision was postponed, and he appears in
the records up to January 1449, but only in scat-
tered payments. The payment of June 1448 tells
us for the first time just what Pietro had been
doing: whitening, painting and flowering (inal-
bandum, et pingendum et florandum) the arches of
the chapel
80
(seen in Figs. 12, 13, 19, 41, 42, 45,
48). These are indeed partly covered with flow-
ers, clarifying the term florandum, absent from
dictionaries.
81
The flowers were certainly
Angelicos idea. Their obvious earlier model is in
the flowery frames of Gentile da Fabrianos
famous Magi altarpiece in Florence, of 1423.
Angelico knew it well, having painted another
altarpiece for the same chapel.
In general, the thick frames of the Orvieto tri-
angles comprise a double set of painted strips.
The heavy ribs carry the large outer frames with
flowers. Inside, on the plane with the figures, are
rows of tiny heads, 132 altogether. Each type of
frame is omitted in some positions. The thick,
flowered ones are naturally found only when the
vaults have ribs and thus are absent where six of
the triangles rest their bases on the walls. (They
are present on the bases of the other two trian-
gles, which rest on the central transverse arch
between the inner and outer bays.) The thin
frames are absent at the bases of the four obtuse
triangles. Perhaps it was felt that the figures
needed all the height they could get in these
low-lying shapes, and not a bit of it was sacrificed
to an inner frame below them. The need for a
frame could be satisfied, in the two obtuse trian-
gles resting on the transverse arch, by the archs
thick flowered frame just mentioned. For the
other two, resting respectively on the altar wall
and the entrance wall, there are no arches with
ribs, but another answer was found, moving the
frame down one step. It was painted at the top of
the wall, at right angles to the triangle.
The result is that there are two frames always
on the upper oblique sides of the triangles but
only one frame on each base, of which two are
thick and the other six are thin, as discussed. It
would have been functional and easy to use only
one frame everywhere, shifting between the thick
and thin in accordance with the practical exigen-
cies just cited. But that was not done. Wherever
possible, two frames were provided redundantly,
continuing both of the two kinds that were used
alone when that was inevitable. This suppresses
attention to the shifting needs of structure at dif-
ferent points and asserts continuity over the
whole series of articulate partsall with an ele-
gance the more notable as it is hardly ever per-
ceived. Not noted in studies of Angelico, it is a
neat small token of his refined design sense.
It is not possible to attribute the flowers to
individual artists. They are endlessly mechanical,
evidently reusing a few drawings, and there are
no others by known painters to compare. The
little heads are a quite different case and have
been closely studied. About thirty were pro-
duced in the Signorelli phase, but the rest show
the style of the Angelico shop. These are all the
heads on the two upper, oblique sides of all eight
triangles but on only one base, under Angelicos
prophets. Those by the Signorelli shop are on the
five other bases that have heads (recalling that
two bases have no thin frames with heads,
namely, those whose bases rest on the central
transverse arch between the two bays).
Master Pietro, it can be assumed, participated
in this work from the time he was hired in July
1447, but of more interest is the work he did
later, after the Angelico crew had left. That cer-
tainly included all the Angelico-type frames with
heads and flowers in the outer bay, which could
be executed only after the second scaffolding was
built, during this second phase.
82
The fields inside
the frames (fields later all painted by Signorelli)
were of course blank. Evidently Angelicos
return was expected, and Master Pietro was get-
ting a little ahead, using the same repeat patterns
for the flowers. Along with all the ribs, it was
easy to extend his work to the adjacent thin
frames on the plane of the fields, on all the
oblique sides of the triangles. Naturally some
member of the Angelico shop, perhaps Pietro,
had painted the base under Angelicos prophets.
The only oddity is that the crew did not paint a
similar base under Angelicos other triangle, with
Christ. The reason clearly is that its frame, at the
base, was not in the vault area but on the wall
beneath. That area was a convenient place to
work for those who would later paint the wall
the Signorelli crewbut had not been conven-
ient for anyone working on the vault. The same
conditions applied to the thin frames above all
the Signorelli scenes beneath the four acute tri-
angles. Because these had no ribs, Angelicos
crew had not wetted them for painting. That
would have been a special job, and it made more
sense to wait and combine it with work on the
wall below. All this enlarges our previous under-
standing of the processes of fresco work here.
Separately, Master Pietro Baroni now emerges as
the first artist in history with a specialty in flow-
ers, even if probably not as designer but only as
executant. He worked sixty years earlier than the
artist who has been so credited, Giovanni da
Udine, who provided borders in a similar way
for Raphaels frescoes.
Pietro did not paint flowers only. In January
1449 he did an Annunciation in another part of
the cathedral, and then in May he applied to
replace Angelico as head master in the chapel.
83
The committees discussion of this was revealing.
They were unable to meet Angelicos contracted
fee, we learn, because of difficulties with the
budget; income and alms had gone down. Even
so, they would try to persuade him to return, and
then hire Pietro to assist him. Failing this, they
would do nothing, because more concern should
be had about beauty than about what is spent, just
as has always been. Nothing else followed.
Among the remarkable information in this
text is the simple explanation of why Angelicos
work did not continue. Money ran out.
84
Books
on the artist tend to say that why he left the work
unfinished is unknown and to offer speculations.
It has even been said that Angelico broke his
contract. Evidently the record of the committee
discussion is being overlooked. It tells us that the
patrons funds did not come from endowments
or large gifts but rather depended on current
receipts, which were very subject to fluctuations.
Benozzo Gozzoli also applied in 1449 to suc-
ceed Angelico. Then twenty-nine years old, he
had always worked as a chief assistant, but now he
hoped to have his own commission, even if it
would simply mean executing his former masters
scheme. By this time Angelico had left Rome and
was much involved with administrative work in
his own convent in Florence. The committee
responded to Benozzo somewhat positively. As
they had with Master Pietro, they asked that he
produce a trial piece, but in Benozzos case they
offered to subsidize it with the expensive blue
pigment and the use of a house.
85
The request for
a trial piece is strong evidence that Benozzo had
not, as sometimes argued, painted the Judging
Christ or any other major figures in the triangles.
Nothing came of this application either, but
Benozzos trip did bring him work elsewhere in
Orvieto. On December 28 the committee took
note that he had begun an Annunciation for a
woman who now wanted to cancel the order,
on account of the recent revolution in the gov-
ernment and events.
86
That refers to the assassi-
nation of one of the two ruling Monaldeschi
brothers, Gentile, and the flight into exile of the
other, Arrigo, to be recounted further later.
Benozzo proposed to the committee that it might
take over this unfinished work of his, paying only
for the materials. The committee agreed to this
bargain, asking only that the womans coat of
arms be covered by their own. (Their device, a
cross separating the four letters OPSM, Opera di
Santa Maria, appears in Signorellis part of the
chapel.) Such arms were probably often expected,
and not specially mentioned except in special sit-
uations like this.
ri t. : Pietro Baroni, Piet and Saints
Image not available
This incident is revealing on several counts.
External social events, a violent shift in local pol-
itics, had an effect on what happened to art with
respect to a private person, but the cathedral
activities were hardly affected by them, beyond
the opportunity offered for a bargain. Social
impact on the arts is a frequent theme of discus-
sion, usually with less direct evidence and often
with arguments for stronger effects. Another
inference is that the committee was willing to
acquire a painting even though it had had no
input on its iconography. Contrary to conven-
tional wisdom, this has already been inferred in
the larger case of the chapel. Finally, the record
shows Benozzo spending several months in
Orvieto at this time. That would reinforce his
intimate familiarity with the chapel and make it
easier to understand his reuse of its devices in
Montefalco in 1452, the Dante portrait in the
wainscot and the narrative jumping over a frame.
Benozzo never returned to Orvieto. Master
Pietro, of course, stayed and had repeated contact
with the chapel. The chief contact is the commis-
sion given to Magistro Pietro (presuming, as is
usual, that this is the same man) in 1468
to work in one of the little chapels inside the
Cappella Nuova, the one dedicated to Saints
Pietro Parenzo and Faustino.
87
This commission
was for a fresco with one figure of Christ in the
pose (modum) of the Piet and the figures of Saints
Faustino and Pietro Parenzo (Fig. 32). Master
Pietro duly executed these three figures, and his
work was recently rediscovered there.
88
For the
next thirty years this image shared the Cappella
Nuova with Angelicos two vault triangles and
nothing else, a status worth considering. The situ-
ation reinforces the transeptal character of the
space, which now displayed still another unre-
lated cult. The fact that Signorelli then covered
up this fresco with one of his own (Fig. 72),
showing just the same subject, is also thought-
provoking. Our new possibility of seeing both
versions offers a test of Signorellis attitude toward
older work, discussed for the inner bay. This time
he retained the general iconographic meaning,
with the three figures and the tomb, but drasti-
cally changed not only the expressive style but
also the composition and the specific theme. His
Piet will be considered on its own later.
The last record of Master Pietro is from 1489.
He was a member of a large citizens committee
charged with discussing whether Perugino should
be invited to paint the New Chapel.
89
In a small
irony, Pietro thus functioned as one of the lesser
decision makers about a project that he had once
hoped would be given to himself. He was even a
small patron, for in his will dated 1482 he named
as his residuary legatee the cathedral, and specifi-
cally its camerlengo, or head of the building com-
mittee, in case of the deaths of his wife and other
relatives.
90
His view of the project, which may
well have been representative of the townspeople,
was a positive one.
cn:r + r r + nr r r
Intermission, 14481499
p
he departure of Angelico and his crew in
September 1447 was supposed to last only to
the next summer, but lack of money to pay
them meant that they never returned. The town
was left with a large project, undertaken and just
begun, with no way to proceed. The theme that
had emerged, the Last Judgment, may have
added to the problem. Other projects using stan-
dard narratives, like that in the cathedral choir,
also had starts and stops, yet did get completed
just before the chapel was. At the time, no one
else chose the theme of the Last Judgment, with
its outsize demands on interdependent motifs.
Only Angelicos prestige made it a feasible
choice; without Angelico it may have seemed a
greater problem to pursue.
The theme was special not only in demanding
a large scale but also in the interdependence of its
references, an internal schematic complexity
with symmetry that rested on meaning instead of
the usual time series. It sent a message of unap-
pealable authority from the top and of impact on
the crowds below, supported by a force that was
both divine and military. It is tempting to take it
as a symbol of medieval social structure, specifi-
cally of feudalism, which would be articulated
here through its churchly analogue.
1
Conspicuous and expensive presentations like
this one, suggesting sponsorship by rulers, would
appear to support such an approach. Yet one of
the most spectacular examples, the Baptistery in
Florence, was sponsored by what was perhaps the
most impressive counterfeudal society of the
time, a commercial city run by committees of
merchants.
2
Exalting Gods control over good and
evil, this Last Judgment requires a more complex
and nuanced historical reading. The many monu-
mental Last Judgments of the early and middle
fourteenth century have been seen as modifying
the older symmetrical schema in individual ways.
The local donor in Giotto from a new mercantile
family, Pisas hell without a corresponding
heaven, and Nardos assertion of a flat spiritual
heaven, complementary with a heavy Dantean
hell of rocky caves, have in common chiefly per-
haps an appeal to earthy confirmation of beliefs,
to us evoking real details, in an imagined system.
3
In the next half-century such works seemed to
have no major successors. Angelicos 1430 panel
on the benchback, in its modest scale, might be
read as a surrender to the difficulty of reasserting
the older grandeur of the subject. He uses land-
scape and perspective, favorite new tools of the
innovative in his generation, to assert a bold
modernity. So it may seem odd that after more
than a century Angelico also reverts to the
schematic symmetry of the Baptistery mosaics.
Giving an equal slot to each element of the Judg-
ment, he may be seen seeking the older, tight
authority. These surprises might be understood
in the context of the particular church for which
the panel was made and of its intellectually pow-
erful leader, Ambrogio Traversari, a devotee of
Greek theology.
When Angelico arrived in Orvieto, the grand
walls may have encouraged him toward a similar
solution, as well as to return to the monumental-
ity of Nardo and others. When his beginning and
his plans were then later shown to the painters
who would continue them, notably Signorelli,
the problem may well have seemed archaic.
Once again, their generation was not used to
such models, and the task could be a peau de cha-
grin as well as a challenge. Much to be done was
inevitable by that point, but a fresh use of some
further modern tools might help to evade much
else that could seem too old-fashioned.
Not only older painted images, but also other
products of the time, can suggest how the Last
Judgment theme could retain a medieval value
that could retain validity even while infused with
new mixes. The religious drama, active in central
Italy in the fifteenth century, has rarely been
considered in this context. Most of the dramas
are narratives, like most fresco cycles, but two
Last Judgment plays survive. One of them, from
Perugia, which is quite close to the medieval pat-
tern, will be discussed later. That is not the case
with the second drama, a Florentine work of
after 1444.
4
Almost the entire text of the latter
presents, first, individual sinners pleas when they
are damned for committing one after another of
the seven deadly sins, and then the failure of all
their efforts to win acquittal. Thus among the
segments of the Judgment schema just one, that
with the assembled goats at Josaphat, dominates.
A focus on personal ethics and its consequences
is clear as well in the sermons of the time, mes-
sages to the public that can be seen as analogous
to church painting. The themes of sermons, said
San Bernardino (d. 1444), should be vices and
virtues, punishment and glory. A longer
Dominican list from the same period offers as
chief topics God and the devil, heaven and hell,
the world, soul and body, sin, penance, and
virtue.
5
We are warned that we will be judged,
and lectured about our behavior. What we are
not told about is theological symbolism or the
systematics of the judging process and its stages, as
in the grand murals. Much the same emerges
when we read the book on confessions by Saint
Antonino (d. 1459) often reprinted in the period,
or a short list of the correct themes for paintings,
deriving from Saint Thomas Aquinas and often
restated at this time. They should show lives of
saints, to serve as models for our lives, and
reminders of Christs incarnation, to induce our
devotion.
6
The theological and liturgical forms to
which art historians of this period often turn as
keys are absent in this case too. To be sure, the
old-fashioned factors in works like Angelicos
partly justify their approach.
Records about the chapel for the years after
Angelico left Orvieto, when they concern activ-
ity there at all, deal with work on the windows
and roof and with frustration about the painting
project. The scaffolding is clearly an irritant. In
1465 many thought it should be dismantled, the
administrator tells the committee, and he asks for
guidance. One respondent said it should go,
since it could be replaced later if needed by a bet-
ter type, with wheels. Another thought it should
stay because removal would create a bad impres-
sion that the work of painting begun would not
be finished.
7
Nothing happened, and there was
no follow-up in 1479 when an item on the
agenda called for considering how the chapel
was to be finished with respect to painting.
8
One of the occasional larger meetings, usually
called to debate major decisions, rightly labeled
the chapel an opus imperfectum and voted to
negotiate a contract with the painter Piermatteo
dAmelia. It called on him to provide a sample, as
usual; nothing followed.
9
Minutes in 1489 noted that it had been forty
years since it was begun, and it is the greatest dis-
grace (maximum vilipendium) for the committee
that it is not finished.
10
A month later a second
o : nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
large meeting underlined the point, observing
that it is forty-four years or thereabouts that the
scaffolding is there. It is a dishonor, and the
work should be finished to the honor of God,
the Virgin, the church, and the whole city.
11
This meeting was called to prepare for negoti-
ations with Perugino, which were themselves to
become a frustration over the years. In the mid-
dle of those negotiations, a meeting in winter
149394 again determined that the honor of the
church calls for having the figures and paintings
of the new chapel finished and gave orders for
finishing the said chapel and removing the scaf-
folding, nor should it be allowed to stay there
continuously.
12
The completing of the painting
almost seems driven by the more conspicuous
matter of the disgraceful scaffolding.
The committee was quite correct when they
called Perugino famosissimus,
13
as only Angelico
had been labeled in earlier debates. Perugino was
called the best master in Italy in 1500, in a let-
ter of recommendation from Agostino Chigi,
later a major patron of Raphael, to his father. He
said Pinturicchio was the next best, and there was
no third. The even more famous patroness
Isabella dEste gave Perugino a commission,
explaining it was because she wanted works by
the leading masters.
14
The Orvieto committee
probably spoiled their chances with him when
they asked him too to provide a sample, by doing
the vaults for a very small fee, before they would
deal with his very high price for the whole.
15
They kept trying, however, for a decade. Their
efforts include a letter to Perugino in Florence
from the Bishop of Orvieto, the sole appearance
of that official in records of the century of work
on the chapel.
16
The committees concern about famous artists
is evoked by a very different record when, in
1464, a new lock and key, replacing the older
ones, are purchased for the doors of the figure
done by master Gentile in the same church.
17
This is the frescoed Madonna by Gentile da Fab-
riano that is still there, having survived both a
Baroque remodeling in its vicinity and then the
dismantling of that work. The special interest of
this text is that, unlike earlier references to the
fresco, it identifies the fresco by the artists name
only, not by the religious theme or function. It
needs a lock because it is precious, and the value
evidently resides in the authorship. Gentiles sta-
tus in his century was mentioned above. In 1489,
when the committee boasted that Perugino had
worked in the Vatican palace in Rome,
18
it
might have been recalled that not only Angelico
but also Gentile had been a papal painter. The
phenomenon of painters names being cited
alone by owners of their works occurs in a small
number of other instances at this time.
19
The political history of Orvieto took a major
new turn from 1449. The murder and exile of
the Monaldeschi tyrants was mentioned earlier;
the individuals who brought them down were
other Monaldeschi, two first cousins called
Paolopietro son of Corrado and Gentile son of
Luca.
20
(The various branches repeated the same
names; the defeated tyrants were brothers named
Enrico [or Arrigo] and Gentile sons of Pietroan-
tonio.) A traditional tool in similar fights had
been to call on papal influence. Orvietos legal
position within the papal states had more or less
real importance at different moments. This time,
unlike all previous occasions, the effect was that
real power passed to the papacy, where it long
remained, and that all the Monaldeschi were
reduced to being rich landowning citizens. The
exiled Gentile son of Pietroantonio failed in an
effort to reenter the city. Yet after his death, his
son, Pietroantonio the younger, was married to
Giovanna, daughter of the chief of the winning
branch, Gentile son of Lucaa reconciliation
that sealed that last stage of the familys role.
The major positive result was heightened
interest in Orvieto on the part of the popes. The
i x+ r r xi s s i ox, + + , , o
ri t. Pier with Last Judgment, Orvieto Cathedral faade (detail of Fig. 6)
Image not available
special role of Pius II as a neighbor from Siena
has been mentioned, as has his visit in 1459. A
typical and important result was the marriage
arranged between Camilla, daughter of the win-
ning Paolopietro Monaldeschi, son of Corrado,
and the popes nephew Jacopo Piccolomini. The
Monaldeschi had married into papal families
before, and this same Paolopietros wife was a
Colonna, from Martin Vs clan. At that earlier
time, however, both families shared status as feu-
dal barons and fighters. Now, as the Monaldeschi
were diminished, the Piccolomini had no signifi-
cance outside their papal connection, as indeed
they had never had. Despite this tie, Pius does
not seem to have involved himself with Orvieto
more than other towns he visited once. Never-
theless, his visit and his attention to the sculpture
there, with his close reading of its Last Judgment
segment (Fig. 33), may in this context have had a
heightened interest locally, and then reinforced
the citizens concern about the honor of their
other Last Judgment inside the cathedral.
Pius IIs successor was the Venetian Paul II
(r. 146472). Notice is always taken of Paul IIs
active patronage of visual arts, from his building
of the Palazzo Venezia in Rome to his collecting
of medals and other antiquities. His particular
connection with Orvieto was through his title,
from 1442, as abbot of Santi Severo e Martirio,
three kilometers below the city walls. Ruins
there still evoke its richness.
21
It was one of many
of his benefices and does not imply residence.
Neither does the fact that his great-uncle had
been the towns papal governor in 14058. (Both
offices were given by previous popes of their
family.)
22
Yet it is clear that a real connection
developed. Not only did Paul serve in 1451 as
godfather to Pietroantonio Mondaldeschi the
younger, son of the Gentile exiled in 1449,
23
but
he arranged for the young mans marriage in
1467 to the daughter of the other branch that led
to family peace. He, like Pius II, was legally their
kinsman. The couples involvement in our
chapel will appear in due course.
Pope Paul II was buried in a tomb in Saint
Peters in Rome ordered by a family member,
which has rightly been called the grandest tomb
of any pope in that century. It indeed opens the
great series including the two smaller ones by
Pollaiuolo and then Michelangelos and Berninis.
Yet art history has virtually overlooked it, for an
accumulation of reasons.
24
The interest in this
tomb here is that a Last Judgment fills the lunette
over the effigy (Fig. 34). It is the largest element
in the tomb, has a theme apparently unprece-
dented in tombs in this culture, and is the most
ambitious treatment of the theme in the region
during the half-century between Angelico and
Signorelli. Because the sculptured Last Judgment
on Orvieto Cathedral, the most conspicuous ear-
lier one in sculpture, was so admired in its period,
and because Pope Paul had surely seen it, as had
Pius, it is reasonable to think it was a stimulus to
the surprising choice of the same theme for his
monument.
25
It gives an abbreviated version of
the standard schema, which will be explored
below. Following this, other Last Judgments
appear in the context of this papacy, and that too
is little noted. These include the reverse sides of
two medals, one of the pope of about 146667
and one, by Bertoldo, of about 146869, of Arch-
bishop Filippo de Medici, as well as the lunette
over the tomb of Cardinal Ammanati (d. 1479) in
Sant Agostino, Rome (Fig. 35).
26
Clearly the Last
Judgment was of active concern in Rome at this
time.
The next pope, Sixtus IV (r. 147184), has a
completely different connection with Orvieto. A
member of the previously obscure Della Rovere
family from north Italy, he had no tie to Orvieto
before he became pope. But in 1476 he named as
its bishop one Giorgio della Rovere, seeming to
suggest the nepotism for which he is particularly
known.
27
Yet Giorgio may not have been a rela-
i x+ r r xi s s i ox, + + , , o
tive, as is usually assumed; he is absent from the
most thorough family tree of the clan.
28
Bishop
Giorgio, moreover, seems to have come from
Parma rather than from Genoa as the pope did.
29
An explanation for his nomination of Giorgio is
perhaps available on the basis of an analogy. The
pope did give benefices to an unrelated family of
Della Rovere from Piedmont, perhaps to give an
impression that he, like them, had noble blood.
30
The same may apply to Giorgio, who remained
Bishop of Orvieto for decades, while the popes
actual relatives got frequent promotions. The
popes nephew Cardinal Giulio della Rovere
(later Pope Julius II) did not mention the bishop
when in 1492 he wrote to the Orvieto city
council about the citys and his own rival claims
on Peruginos serviceseven though Peruginos
work in Orvieto would have been in the
bishops cathedral.
31
To be sure, the general
scarcity of records of Bishop Giorgio in Orvieto
may well be due to absenteeism, a normal phe-
nomenon.
The next pope, Innocent VIII, was elected
with help from the cardinals of Sixtuss family, so
that it retained much power. It was the reverse,
however, when the opposite party elected
Alexander VI of the Borgia family (r. 14921503).
Almost at once a bishop coadjutor was assigned to
Orvieto, officially because Bishop Giorgio suf-
fered from gout. When this coadjutor was pro-
moted to another bishopric (in which he did not
reside), he was followed in Orvieto by no less
than four others in succession up to 1503. The last
one is recorded on August 4 of that year as set to
o o nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
rit. Giovanni
Dalmata, Last Judg-
ment, lunette of tomb
of Pope Paul II. Rome,
Saint Peters
Image not available
succeed Della Rovere, who would resign. Yet
that did not happen, for he was still bishop in
1505, and it was not until 1511 that a new one
took office on account of Giorgios death. The
simple explanation is the death on August 18,
1503, of Pope Alexander, the bishops enemy,
allowing the bishop to annul his resignation and
perhaps get rid of the coadjutor. Yet, altogether,
information about Giorgio della Rovere is sparse,
and frustratingly so because he was bishop during
the chief campaign of work in the chapel. (Writ-
ers on the chapel have, however, hardly taken
note either of him or of his obscurity, and they
may have been justified.)
The bishops one spectacular moment
occurred in the 1490s, unfortunately recorded
only in reports that may have been biased against
him. While Pope Alexander was making his con-
trol of the town firm, the bishop is said to have
imported a mob of relatives, some inclined to
sedition (perhaps the same people against whom
there was rioting in 1494) crying, Death to the
outsiders. His palace was set on fire in 1497 and
he fled the town, returning only in July 1499
when a brief peace was made.
32
The bishop
surely had nothing to do with hiring Signorelli in
April of that year. Absence from any records is
the main indication that the church hierarchy
had little involvement in the cathedrals business
throughout the entire period surveyed here; that
lack finds its most conspicuous sign in this
episode.
Pope Alexander made a visit to Orvieto in
November 1493 with sixteen cardinals. This kind
of attention was unprecedented, and he was able
to present himself as a friend of the city, restoring
benefits that had been taken away by Innocent
VIII. One of the new cardinals in attendance,
Alexanders eighteen-year-old son, Cesare Bor-
gia, was scheduled to take over as lord of a terri-
tory that included Orvieto, and soon did so, with
much effect.
33
Another new cardinal was Cesares
good friend, the twenty-five-year-old Alessandro
Farnese, who today is remembered as the later
Pope Paul III, of the Council of Trent and the
Titian portrait. Farnese was already important in
the specific context of Orvieto. The Farnese
were local barons, with their castle just west of
Lake Bolsena, and from the twelfth century on
had served in Orvieto as consul, podest, captain,
and rector; Guido Farnese had been bishop when
the cathedral was under construction (130228).
34
Soon thereafter the family expanded its reach, as
captains for popes and for Florence and as larger
landowners. The tomb of Captain Pietro Farnese
(d. 1363), in Florence Cathedral, is the earliest of
the famous series of monuments there of the
citys mercenary generals, such as John Hawk-
wood. It is therefore no surprise that the cardi-
nals grandmother was a Monaldeschi and that his
only brother married another. Alessandro was
thus linked to the same family with whom popes
had made similar alliances not long before. His
sister married a member of the very great Roman
baronial family of Orsini, connecting him with
the Cardinal Orsini, who in 1498 served briefly
as one of the coadjutor bishops in Orvieto.
When the exiled Gentile Monaldeschi had tried
to return in 1461, it was the future popes father,
Luigi Farnese, who foiled the plot.
35
Alessandro Farnese appears to be the only car-
dinal of any period with direct links to Orvieto.
In fact, he was virtually a local townsman,
36
and
not only that, but he was a major cardinal, close
to the pope, and not only that, he spent time in
the town. When Alexander and Cesare Borgia
proposed to take control of the town, which was
new to them, Farnese was the one obvious figure
connected both with them and with the town.
He was at this time clearly the local person of
greatest importance as well as of highest rank. Of
course, he held local titles too, first as one of the
cathedrals canons and then as its archpriest, the
top rank under the bishop.
37
i x+ r r xi s s i ox, + + , , o ;
With the pope and twenty cardinals, he
returned for another visit in 1495.
38
From then to
the end of the Borgia clans reign, Orvietos de
facto ruler to whom appeals had to be made was
the popes son Cesare, even if he was usually at
war in the Romagna, seeking to create a kind of
kingdom for himself. In Orvieto, Farnese doubt-
less retained his special status, even though he
was one of the cardinals with the smallest
income,
39
or possibly for that very reason. Later,
as pope, he would sponsor improvements in the
cathedral.
40
Yet he seems never to be mentioned
in the discussion of Signorellis work there about
its patronage or its religious qualities.
In 1499, after ten years of negotiation, the
cathedral committee decided to cease its efforts
to employ Perugino as their painter.
41
During that
time they had also discussed other artists, includ-
ri t. Shop of Mino da
Fiesole, Last Judgment, lunette
of tomb of Cardinal Ammanati.
Rome, Sant Agostino, cloister
Image not available
ing lesser ones, like Pastura, in 1498.
42
Pastura
was the sixth painter they had deliberated on
since starting with Angelico. Then Signorellis
name appeared suddenly for the first time in
1499, in three documents of April 5. The first of
these records was of one of the larger meetings of
the committee with other citizens, which were
called on rare important occasions. Its minutes
endorse the choice of Signorelli. The official
smaller committee then voted to hire Signorelli,
and the contract with him completes the series.
43
Signorelli, who was in town, appeared before the
first group. All this is remarkably unlike the com-
mittees considerations of earlier artists, whose
qualifications were debated for months before
the artists were invited to visit Orvieto. We thus
regrettably lack information on what led the
committee to Signorelli. Even if some records
are lost (from an archive whose record of preser-
vation is very high
44
) the early stages of this search
apparently took place outside the usual context
of the record-keeping committee.
This inference is in accord with the odd way in
which the first of the three documents describes
Signorelli. After pointing out that Perugino is no
longer a possibility, it is next noted that there has
now come to Orvieto a certain master Luca of
Cortona, a very famous painter in all Italy, as it is
said, and his experience appears in many places, as
stated by himself, Master Luca, and Crisostimo
Fiani, and others having full information about
him, he having done many very beautiful works
in various cities, and especially Siena.
The lack of fit between the label very
famous and the evidence to back it up is almost
absurd. Their knowledge of the fine credentials
of the artist they hired that day came primarily
from the artist himself, on the same occasion
when they met him, along with the statement by
the very minor local artist Crisostimo
45
and
unnamed others. The one concrete point was
about work in Siena. All this does not add up to
famous. The key fact is that Signorelli had
already come to town, ready to work, without
the committees involvement or knowledge of
his reputation. Someone told them he was
famous, someone who had been in contact with
him and who presumably suggested that he come
to Orvieto. This had to involve a person or per-
sons who knew his work, regarded it as outstand-
ing, and was also in a position to get the
committees ear, and then its consentthus to
impose his choice.
The list of citizens present at the larger assembly
mentioned offers a clue. It begins with the official
smaller committee and goes on with the usual
prelate, lawyers, and merchants found in earlier
similar assemblies, but this time the latter group
begins with one Count Carletto da Corbara.
46
In
accounts of the period in Orvieto, this minor
nobleman appears in a political role, as the towns
usual ambassador to the pope, managing rela-
tions between the traditional citizen leaders and
their vehement new rulers, the Borgia. In Sep-
tember 1494 the count traveled to Rome and
returned with a proposal that Cesare Borgia be
named as protector. They did so unanimously,
and the pope then sent them a breve of commen-
dation. Officially this was a spontaneous idea that
came from the committee.
47
In 1499, when the
count appears in the records as a member of this
committee of citizens approving Signorelli, the
Borgia regime was as much in charge as before.
The indication that Corbara was there to make
sure again that the citizens did what the Borgia
wanted fits the earlier indications that someone or
some group outside the committee had enough
influence to see to it that the committee decided a
certain way. The Borgia group are the only visible
such persons, but in this case they were function-
ing like benevolent despots, pushing a solution
through after many unsuccessful tries to fill the
position. The solutionSignorelliproved to be
superb.
i x+ r r xi s s i ox, + + , , o ,
The question that then emerges is why they
chose Signorelli. Some answers will emerge when
his work is explored in more detail. Signorelli did
not have a good case for being called famosus, as
Angelico and Perugino did. To be sure, he had
worked in Rome for a pope, in a team with
Perugino and others, in 1482, and soon after that
in Loreto for one of Sixtus IVs real nephews. But
then his career turned less brilliant for sixteen
years or so and was given over almost entirely to
altarpieces in towns in the region: Perugia,
Volterra, and Citt di Castello.
48
Around 1490 he
did have one great patron: Lorenzo de Medici
the Magnificent, in Florence, for whom he did
the elegant Medici Madonna and the extraordi-
nary Pan. Lorenzo, however, did not give him
any larger projects of frescoes, as he did to artists
whom we consider Signorellis peers, Perugino,
Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, and Filippino Lippi.
49
As
for Siena, his one job there was shared with
Francesco di Giorgio, and Signorelli had the less
prestigious half.
50
When he came to Orvieto in
1499 to discuss the cathedral project, he was in
the middle of a very large project for the grand if
isolated abbey at Monte Oliveto, some twenty-
five kilometers from Siena in a straight line. It was
the most ambitious project he had ever had to
that point, and this might well be what is referred
to as his work especially in Siena in the minutes
of the committee meeting. If Signorelli was the
informant here, one would expect him to cite this
rather than the lesser work of some years earlier in
Siena itself, and the committee scribe, plainly not
well informed about him, would then have
slipped to the term Siena rather than il
senese, the idiom for Sienese territory.
Signorelli seems to have dropped this job half
done to take on the Orvieto project, which is
also a somewhat mysterious move.
51
In hindsight,
his success in Orvieto may cause us to overlook
the oddity of that. He was, after all, offered only
a small job in his first contract in Orvieto, to fin-
ish the triangles of the vault. Even the whole
chapel was no greater a project than the one he
left. Lacking other obvious reasons for his choice,
one might again turn to the suggestion above
about there being pressure to choose him. And
Signorelli himself might have been under pres-
sure from the same powerful source to choose
Orvieto.
52
(One recalls how, soon after, another
pope pressed Michelangelo to drop a grand half-
finished project in Florence.) The result, how-
ever it came to be, was a totally unexpected
masterpiece.
; o nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
cn:r + r r r our
Signorelli Paints the Inner Bay
p
he contract signed on April 5, 1499, by Sig-
norelli and the committee, called for Signorelli
to paint the six still-blank triangles of the
vaults.
1
They would join the two that Angelico
had painted long before, and so fill the roof area
of the two-bay chapel with imagery. The con-
tract paper names four witnesses, two Orvietan
and two not. The former were obviously the
committees witnesses, and one of them was the
painter Crisostimo already encountered. The
two outsiders were brothers, Mariotto and
Francesco, sons of Urbano of Cortona. Their
origin in Signorellis hometown of Cortona is
less evocative than the fact that their father,
Urbano (c. 14261504), was a notable sculptor
who had worked since 1451 in Siena. The clear
implication is that Signorelli had brought Mari-
otto and Francesco with him from Siena or
nearby to be his assistants. That is additional evi-
dence that he had been rather sure of being
hired. No other records of these brothers seem to
survive, a common fate for assistants.
Signorelli was to be paid 180 ducats and to
begin on May 25; the interim was doubtless to
clear up affairs elsewhere. He would then work
through the whole summer as long as he could
paint, a reference to the usual suspension of
fresco work in freezing weather. His work had to
be similar to the other figures which are there,
the figures and stories to be given and assigned
by the administrator. (No stories in our sense
were involved. Stories is used in other Orvieto
documents to mean nothing more than an image
involving more than one figure.
2
) The expensive
gold and blue colors, and a place to live with a
bed, would also be paid for by the committee,
but Signorelli was responsible for everything else,
including paying his helpers.
Signorelli naturally began in the inner bay,
where two triangles were full but two were still
blank. This is clear from the next record, on
November 25,
3
which notes that the whole inner
vault is now done, and then from his appeals for
instructions about the outer bay, for which, the
text points out, there is no designum. It is the
designum that had been available for the inner bay,
the gavantone, that was the theme of the detailed
discussion in a previous chapter of Angelicos
drawing of half the chapel. To have painted only
the two inner triangles since May suggests a slow
pace, because scaffolding and a design were
already in place. Angelico had done as much
painting and dealt with the other factors in only
three months. However, Signorelli is on record as
at home in Cortona in July
4
and probably did not
begin when he had promised. He also may have
finished some time before November 25, when
the committee met to consider his query. He was
not being paid regularly; he had only been paid
half the fee in several installments up to May
1500, and the rest in June, despite the terms of the
contract that he would be paid as he paints, pro
rata. This is not unusual, but it does mean that
payment records cannot be relied on as clues to
the dates when parts of a work were completed,
as is quite often hoped by historians.
Of these first two triangles by Signorelli, the
one showing Mary and the apostles as assistant
judges, to Christs right, naturally alludes to the
one opposite, where the Baptist and prophets
likewise assist. The latter group, by Angelico,
had sixteen figures in seven rows, three people in
front and then two, three, two, three, and two,
with a single person at the narrow top of the tri-
angle. All are shown clearly as individuals by this
system in echelon, all have elbow room on both
sides, and there is air left between the group and
the frames. Signorellis larger figures, on the
other hand, may touch the frames, and their pro-
jecting knees wear weightier fabric. They sit in
just five rows, of three, four, three, two, and one.
Yet the change from Angelico is rather subtle,
and the figures show none of the force and stress
for which Signorelli is famous. He belonged to a
generation of painters with notable individual
approachesthe curvilinear and elegant Botticelli,
the heavily ornamental Pinturicchio, the insis-
tently realistic Ghirlandaio, the nervous Filippino
with his tremulous lineand knew them all from
shared jobs or in other ways. He instead seems to
offer a median version of the formal language of
the time, where massive body forms shift their
limbs just asymmetrically enough to be clearly
alive.
In the other triangle, potential action and
woolly robes recur, but these figures, being
angels, are thinner as they turn gracefully. The
age held strong ideas about differentiating human
types by gender, age, and degree of force, chiefly
for reasons of dramatic exposition.
The committee responded to Signorellis
November 25 appeal in only general terms: He
was to continue and to maintain the Last Judg-
ment as the theme (something that had not been
explicit in earlier surviving documents), and he
would receive a new designum. However, in this
case the word designum does not mean draw-
ing. Signorelli himself would be the draftsman if
there were one, as later on there was. Here
designum is meant as the general concept of the
project, a meaning that is vivid in a record of the
artists later years. In 1513 he borrowed money in
Rome from Michelangelo saying he had come to
town with a project in mind; when he did not
repay the loan, Michelangelo commented that
evidently his disegno had not succeeded.
5
Signorelli therefore went on to paint the four
triangles of the outer bays vault, the only work
for which he had a contract at the time. It is
recorded that he is at work on January 6, 1500:
pinxerit et adhuc pingat.
6
The occasion of the
report is his complaint that he is working hard
and being underpaid. The response was to pro-
vide him with more grain and wine than had
been contracted. The committee was obviously
glad to have him.
The four sets of saints in the outer triangles are
composed, in the case of the two tall acute trian-
gles, much like the similar ones done before. The
group of patriarchs seems to be a virtual repeat of
the apostles; they recede in rows of four, three,
three, and three. The group of doctorsthat
is, teachers of the churchshows similar individ-
uals, but they form a noticeably more irregular
composition. The first four are inevitably the
official four doctors of the church, Ambrose,
Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory, but they are
linked to a fifth, who leans over the shoulder of
the probable Augustine. This is a Dominican,
presumably Dominic. The following row of five
is strongly subdivided, into sets of two, one, and
two. Behind these, two sit left of center, backed
up by three more. It is tempting here to see the
artist now more at ease in his formula, breaking
from convention for a looser experiment. He is
now confident it will still compose.
The two obtuse triangles, in their low width,
impose a system that is hardly more than a single
; : nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
long row. A single saint dominates each. Stephen
inevitably leads the martyrs, Mary Magdalene
leads the virgins. Both are flanked by emphati-
cally symmetrical associates. Here the artist seems
to have turned to the conventions of altarpieces
with a central Madonna flanked by saints. Those
had indeed been his chief work in the preceding
decade.
7
Seven of the eight vault triangles, all except
the Judging Christ, carry labels. One identifies
the symbols of Christs torture that angels hold:
Signa Iudicium Indicantia. Each of the others
identifies the category of saints shown. In the
inner bay they are the prophets and apostles
flanking Christ as assistant judges. (The label dis-
regards Marys presence with the apostles.) The
outer bays labels note the martyrs, doctors, patri-
archs, and virgins.
In the Last Judgments discussed, including
Angelicos benchback, Christ was invariably
flanked with such seated assistant judges on both
sides, headed by Mary and John the Baptist, as
shown in the earlier survey. They similarly
always showed angels with symbols of the Pas-
sion and with trumpets. That assembly made the
top half of a standard Judgment scene complete.
Here they all appear in the vault of the inner bay,
painted or drawn by Angelico. It thus becomes
plausible that Angelico had planned to use only
the inner bay of his chapel to show the entire
theme.
The announcement of 1499 that the theme of
the judgment should continue into the outer
vault was thus an actual decision, calling for extra
imagery not standard in tradition. This eventually
led to the extraordinary scenes on the outer bays
walls, that of Antichrist and the others. The ini-
tial problem was to fill the outer vault suitably,
and naturally with holy figures in heaven who
did not belong to the categories already used.
Angelicos benchback had increased the reper-
tory of Christs assistants far beyond the twelve
apostles that were standard: twenty-six figures
appear in that area. The reason, suggested in the
earlier full discussion of the benchback, that he
showed so many other figures in that panel
patriarchs (including Adam and Abel), prophets,
martyrs (including Stephen), and doctors of the
church (including Dominic)might have been
that he wanted to use the space commonly occu-
pied by them, among the saved just below, for
his new garden. In Orvieto, Angelico had set up
another sort of holy expansion, giving Christs
entire left to prophets, in the place given before
to half the apostles. Assigning each of the two tri-
angles flanking Christ to one category of saints in
that case was a neat way of dealing with and then
utilizing the internal frames, as well as populating
these large surfaces. The selection of the category
prophets for that honor was obvious because
John the Baptist, who was a prophet, belonged
on Christs left in the traditional arrangement of
Last Judgments. Angelicos assignment of each
framed triangle to just one category of saints
meant that many saints seen in the benchback
were now left out. It is those that Signorelli now
distributed in the newly assigned extra space, the
vaults of the outer bay.
This logic cannot have been used at the cathe-
dral, however, because no one in Orvieto was
aware of the benchback and its choice of saints.
The recent Last Judgment on the tomb of Paul II
showed apostles only, in the older form, but the
still newer one of Cardinal Ammanati (Fig. 35)
shows a freer variant again.
8
Its ten assisting
judges comprise just two apostles, Peter and Paul,
with three patriarchs: Abraham, Moses, and
David. (The five smaller figures are hard to iden-
tify.) Abraham has souls on his lap, in the very
old formula symbolizing heaven.
9
This tomb, of a
prelate who died in 1479, was quite possibly
known in Orvieto, because the cardinal was asso-
ciated with the Siena clan of the Piccolomini and
spent time in their town. The associates of the
s i txor r i i i r:i x+ s + nr i xxr r n:. ;
clan also included the Orvietan prelate Alberi,
who will reappear later. Signorelli, in Rome in
1482, probably took note of this major new
monument. In any case, such an extension of
saints in categories in a Last Judgment was now
being adopted.
The placing of the several categories would
not be a problem. Then as now, the Roman
missal classes saints (though not prophets and
patriarchs) in four broad sets, labeled apostles,
martyrs, confessors (who comprise all nonmartyr
male saints, generally those known for doctrine),
and virgins (a title used as a brief way to allude to
all female saints). In the missal, this has the great
utility of making available a suitable Mass for any
saint who does not have an individual one. Sig-
norelli shows the same four sets with these labels,
ranked in the same way. Apostles are nearest the
altar, then, in the outer bay, the martyrs, then the
doctors of the church, and the virgins nearest the
outer door.
These sets of saints appear in another established
church text, one that also includes the patriarchs
and prophets. This is the Litany, a sung prayer
known since the early Christian period and some-
times called the Kyrie Eleison, from its opening
words. It begs mercy from Christ first, and then in
order from Mary and the angels, the patriarchs and
prophets, the apostles, the martyrs, the confessors,
monks, and virgins. Allowing the confessors and
monks to share a triangle, Signorelli gives us
exactly that series. Many of the Kyrie Eleison
prayers to these groups name major individuals of
the group.
10
Stephen is inevitably named first
among the martyrs, followed by his fellow dea-
cons Lawrence and Vincent, then by the young
soldiers Fabian and Sebastian. The first three, and
the others probably, are the ones Signorelli repre-
sents in the martyr triangle, to whom he adds two
bishops. (The individual names in these cases are
subject to some changes, as is striking in a compar-
ison between a missal of 1518 and a modern
one.
11
) Similarly, Magdalene is regularly named
first among the virgins and is at the center of
Signorellis female group; his others there are hard
to name. The standard four doctors of the church
are of course named first in the prayer to that
group, as they appear in Signorellis front row:
Saints Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory.
Farther back, as in the Litany, are the founders of
orders: Benedict, Francis, and Dominic. The
Kyrie Eleison appears in all Books of Hours, the
best-seller of prayer books in Signorellis time. To
show these figures in the vault is not a matter of
unusual learning, no more than a Madonna in an
altarpiece. They are the images to choose if one
wants a large number of saints.
The six labels that identify each category of
saints use a different collective noun in each case:
Chorus of Apostles, Number of Prophets, Army
of Martyrs, and the like. The Signorelli scholar-
ship has long noticed that the first three of these
copy another very common source, the Te
Deum, a hymn most suitable for a Last Judgment
because it defines Christ as the future judge of
sinners. Today it is in every breviary, since clergy
sing it at Matins every Saturday. The Te Deum
had other functions too, such as being sung in
the clerical procession that leaves a house of a
dying person after giving Last Rites.
12
Having
been composed in the early Christian era, it has
only two categories of saints: apostles and mar-
tyrs. When other categories emerged, similar
texts invoked them with collective nouns, but
these did not become standardized. A com-
pany of patriarchs and a college of confessors
appear in a sermon by Saint Bernard for All
Saints Day, which also changes the terms used
for the original three sets. A cohort of martyrs
and a chorus of confessors appear in a hymn
included in breviaries, to be sung by the clergy at
Lauds on All Saints Day.
13
The assembling of the
categories of saints is routine and may be so
regarded on the vault.
; nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
The committee evidently was pleased with
Signorelli, for in April 1500 it contracted with
him to paint the entire chapel. The agreement
lists the walls and the elements that are external
to the wallsthat is, the entrance arch, the win-
dow embrasures, and the little chapel of Saints
Faustino and Pietro Parenzo. As for the walls, he
must now do three: the end wall with the altar
and the two walls on the sides, and he must do
them according to the drawing (disegno) given
by the master, and perhaps with more figures if
he wishes, but not fewer than he has given us in
the drawing. On the fourth, entrance wall, he is
to paint stories as we will give him or as we will
agree with him. From this it emerges that the
theme of the entrance wall had not yet been set,
much as in the earlier case the theme of the outer
vault had to be decided when the painter came to
it. Finally he is to do the wainscot below with
grillwork and creatures (ferrate e spiritelle), once
more following a drawing he has prepared.
14
Of some small details in this document, the
oddest is the decision to lift up (elevando) the
cupboard of the Assumption statue so that the
figures will be more beautiful. Indeed, a master
was then paid for lifting it.
15
Evidently the statue
blocked the view of the altar wall on which
painting would be done, just as later the Baroque
altar covered and destroyed some parts of it. One
may surmise that the statue was to be placed in
front of the window, supported on columns or
the like. Yet this did not resolve the problem of a
good view of this area and was to have a major
effect on the imagery.
Signorelli duly proceeded to work and seems
to have finished at the end of 1503.
16
Efforts to
determine the sequence of the parts have not
produced a consensus. Style comparisons, the
standard tool for such inquiries, are notoriously
subject to argument. Successful cases for the same
period, such as the study of Raphaels early work,
benefit from help provided by comparisons with
numerous other dated works from each year,
absent in this instance. Some other factors exter-
nal to style are, however, useful.
As the theme was not set for the entrance wall,
it could not be painted right away. If he began
on a wall adjacent to itthat is, on a side wall of
the outer bayhe would generate a later neces-
sity either to proceed from there first in one
direction, toward the altar, and thereafter back in
the opposite direction, stepping over the work
done, toward the entrance wall, or vice versa. To
plan in that way, creating useless labor in moving
scaffolding and the like, seems unlikely. The
obvious approach in the given condition would
be to begin as far as possible from the entrance,
to reach it last. That would mean beginning in
the inner bay near the altar. This option is inde-
pendently supported by data from the recent
cleaning of the frescoes. On the side wall at our
left, overlap of painted plaster shows the inner
bay segment to be earlier.
17
The Antichrist paint-
ing, the outer and thus later bay there, seems for
other separate reasons to be subsequent to some
events of 1502, to be explored, placing this ele-
ment of the outer bay near the end of the
process.
The same result is evoked by a more general
factor in the situation. While the theme of the
entrance wall was unknown, there was rich basis
for the inner bay: Angelicos gavantone. Sig-
norellis drawings, added to that at this point,
were available equally for the walls of both bays,
but the provision in the contract allowing Sig-
norelli to add figures tells us that they were not
considered a definitive and thus final version. To
be sure, the painting of the whole chapel was
speedy enough to question the presence of style
evolution, something perhaps too dear to schol-
ars. The chief importance of thinking about a
sequence may be the inevitability of considering
the parts in some sequence when writing and
looking.
In Angelicos panels of Last Judgments, the
center figure of Christ at the top was linked with
the open tombs below. (They omitted the tradi-
tional figure of Michael, sorter of souls, who
reappears, however, in the tomb of Pope Paul
II.) In Orvieto, the big window on the altar wall
forced changes, notably, as discussed, pushing the
Christ group up into the vault.
18
Unlike the situ-
ation in Nardos chapel, however, the Orvieto
window did leave some wall space available
below itself. The Baroque altar has made this
invisible and hard to estimate. However, it has
been presented in a reconstruction drawing in
connection with the recent conservation work.
This shows a solid wall of greater height than the
figure we see to its left, the standing saved soul.
19
There was certainly adequate room to paint the
usual empty tombs. The view that Angelico pro-
posed to put them there is supported by their
presence in that location in all the panels of the
theme he produced later.
What makes this important is that Signorelli
removed this motif. He took drastic and now
famous action and moved the Raising of the Dead
to the outer bay, where it acquired a separate
enormous status. The resulting image has been
rightly treated as brilliant. (Yet it is a token of the
limitations of the monographic approach that this
presentation has been treated as a given, with no
notice of the steps used to generate it.) The shift
is easily consistent with, though not required
by, the view that the inner bay came first. The
problem leading to the rejection of the usual
locus was surely the Assumpta and its tabernacle.
The arrangement in 1500 to move it higher has
never been connected with the process of Sig-
norellis work, even though it has been reason-
ably thought he was behind it. Even when it was
moved up, it evidently did not seem to him that
he had adequate room on the wall behind it for
the resurrection of the dead souls from the tombs.
Instead, he used the area for marginal enlarge-
ments of other motifs already present nearby, in
particular the approach to hell.
20
Angelico had not
been disturbed by the Assumpta, it would seem.
It was brought into the chapel early in 1447,
before his work in the summer, but perhaps not
in an imposing way; the lamp and its rope were
ordered only as he was leaving.
21
The contract also specified that Signorelli
would paint the window embrasures, which per-
haps were a problem. He filled those of the big
central window with two bishop saints that share
the weighted geometry, with a bit of mobility, of
the doctors of the church above. These two bish-
ops have traditionally been given a likely identity
as Saint Costanzo and San Brizio (Fig. 36), who
had local cults. Although they have no obvious
role in a Last Judgment, the period was comfort-
; o nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
ri t. o Bishop saint, in
window embrasure of
altar wall (see Fig. 25,
c)
Image not available
able with visual complexes showing distinct
interests of patron groups. No role for these bish-
ops in the Last Judgment scheme has been pro-
posed in studies of the chapel, but some details
give a hint. They stand on clouds, like all the
holy groups in the triangles just above, and thus
are in heaven too. They share the embrasures
with musician angels, and these evidently form
part of a group with other identical angels at right
angles to them on the main wall surface, who are
leading souls to heaven. Thus Brizio and
Costanzo may be considered as an additional
holy category in heaven, segregated like all the
others by frames and turning walls.
The embrasures of the two small windows on
this wall evoke more complex factors. Each side
of each window shows a circular painted frame,
of a kind that will reappear at the other end of
the chapel, and inside it an archangel. The four
seem to be in order of rank. The best place, on
the saved side and near the center, goes to
Michael (Fig. 37), shown as weigher of saved and
damned souls. The saved soul kneels and prays,
the damned one falls out of the pan like one
descending to hell. Michael weighs and sorts
souls in traditional Last Judgments, where his
place is the one here preempted by the window.
Evidently this is the basis for his presence here,
and the other three angels may simply be extrap-
olations from his presence. They have no obvi-
ous relevance otherwise. It is easy to recognize
the other two standard archangels, with their
most famous attributes. Gabriel holds the scroll
with Ave Maria, his salutation on the occasion of
s i txor r i i i r:i x+ s + nr i xxr r n:. ; ;
ri t. ; Archangel Michael, in embrasure of side win-
dow in altar wall (cf. Fig. 25, r)
ri t. Archangel Gabriel, in embrasure of side window
in altar wall (cf. Fig. 25, t)
the Annunciation (Fig. 38), and Raphael is with
the young Tobias, whom he guided on a journey
(Fig. 39). The fourth figure (Fig. 40) has been a
mystery. There is no tradition with a fourth
archangel like this. He subdues a devil, as
Michael often does, and some have called this
figure another Michael. But he has a different
costume, and such a duplication would be hard
to cite in the imagery of the era. Happily, a major
text exists with the required scheme of four
angels, of which three are the standard ones and
the fourth must fend off Satans efforts to appear
before God. That action certainly matches Sig-
norellis image. This appears in the apocryphal
Book of Enoch, section 4, lines 7 (the action) and
9 (this angels name, Phanuel; in later versions he
is Uriel). The book, which has been called per-
haps the most important apocryphal biblical writ-
ing for the early Christian era, faded from view
in the Middle Ages and has been thought to have
reappeared only in the eighteenth century, from
Ethiopian sources. However, a Jesuit author in
1621, quoting previous European writings,
reports these four angels as found in an Ethiopian
Mass. If a recent suggestion can be confirmed,
that Pico della Mirandola around 1490 was much
interested in the Book of Enoch, this angel could
be linked to the prime cultural context of the
Orvieto chapel, to be explored below, in Floren-
tine humanism.
22
To be sure, it is the architec-
tural constraint in the chapel that called for a
fourth angel (as again in an eighteenth-century
case in Venice at the Gesuiti, where the fourth
one is labeled Salathiel), but one may again
admire the grace with which the artist made him
seem natural.
; nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
ri t. , Archangel Raphael with Tobias, in embrasure of
side window in altar wall (cf. Fig. 25, r)
ri t. o Archangel Phanuel/Uriel, in embrasure of side
window in altar wall (cf. Fig. 25, n)
The altar walls main theme elegantly straddles
the big window. On Christs right (our left)
angels guide the saved souls to heaven, pointing
upward with encouragement and even pulling
them (Fig. 41). The origin of this vertical move
to heaven in Angelicos project was argued at
length in Chapter 2, as a design visible to us in his
Rome panel. Doubt about this perhaps reflects
the feeling that such an image of rising to heaven
is only natural, so it may bear further comment.
The wall area here is tall and narrow, and also
widens toward the top along the rightward curve
of the central window arch. Signorelli, if not
Angelico, works with this, and correspondingly
narrows the figuration at the bottom of the
scene. A single soul kneels at the base, his elbow
noticeably overlapping the frame and connecting
with the side wall around the corner, to be dis-
cussed. A companion alongside him stands up,
ready to lift off. His mobile hands are examples of
Signorellis cubic substance in action. The point-
ing angels above these figures direct them both
up and to the right, the more vertically the
higher they themselves are. These angels and
three others, heroic figures, are musicians.
Between them in counterpoint one more dives
down to the left, to evoke most intensely the role
they all share as assistants in lifting. The meaning
in their dance-like patterns is so clear that its
originality hardly receives attention.
Around the corner from them on the side wall
of the inner bay, the saved have assembled at Jos-
aphat (Fig. 42). This is the previous phase of the
movement to heaven. (However, these walls evi-
dently show one moment, with many individuals
in the queue who have reached various points,
not the same individuals seen twice in different
positions at successive moments.) High on the
wall, musician angels again fly in symmetry as if
in a polyptych. Lower, several offer crowns to
the saved souls, making the angels function
graphic. The line of the saved forms a procession
across the front of the scene. This is most easily
inferred from those at the head of the line, at our
right, who point forward and overlap the painted
frame. They are about to join the two on the
altar wall, just mentioned. In the entire cycle, this
is Signorellis most explicit, if still gentle, signal of
flow past a right angle. It recalls the one used by
Nardo, and thus is likely to have been present in
Angelicos project. Behind these leaders, souls lift
heads to observe the angels, and seem to pause.
The only other people who do not look up,
besides the couple in front, are a similar couple at
the very back, at our left. They seem to signal the
start of the pause in movement. All these people
s i txor r i i i r:i x+ s + nr i xxr r n:. ; ,
ri t. + Ascent of the Blessed, altar wall (cf. Fig. 25, :)
Image not available
well reflect the biblical term sheep for the
saved; their angels are herding them in the right
direction. The only slight suggestion of this kind
in earlier Judgments is in the work of Giotto,
whose saved move steadily up a slight incline,
kept in line by angels behind them.
These saved are innovative in their nudity,
surely unlike what Angelico had projected. All
previous Judgments in this tradition contrasted
the clothed saved with the naked damned, and
this remained so in Paul IIs tomb, after Angelico
and before Signorelli. This innovation, as such,
seems not to have interested writers. Perhaps
they found it only what one would expect in
1500, in the emerging High Renaissance, espe-
cially from a painter praised as an anatomist. Yet
a closer look is surely warranted. At this period
the saved appeared nude, outside a High Renais-
sance context, in the great sequence of Judgment
paintings in northern Europe. Those of Jan Van
Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Stefan Lochner,
Hans Memling, and Hieronymus Bosch are only
the most outstanding. This was a time when the
theme did not flourish in Italian painting. The
nudity was logical in that the souls were regularly
shown emerging naked from their tombs, as in
the sculpture of the Orvieto faade. Mainstream
theology always affirmed that they would then
ri t. : Assembly of the Blessed at Josaphat, side wall (cf. Fig. 26, n)
Image not available
be perfect bodies, in their thirties and in full
health. For the blessed, it would evidently be
attractive to extend this visible status to their next
stage, the sorting at Josaphat.
23
The nude saved do appear in Italy before Sig-
norelli in various less noticeable contexts, pre-
sumably under northern influence. In a very
small Dominican breviary from the shop of the
Venetian Cristoforo Cortese (active 140939),
they are shown in a miniature of the Office of
the Dead.
24
The resurrected dead are not shown
in any separate image here, and perhaps these
tiny figures stand in for them, but in the Abruzzi
fresco of the 1420s discussed earlier, the saved
nude cross a narrow bridge to heaven. That
motif can be seen in Flanders in an almost identi-
cal form and could well have a northern source,
even though the Flemish work is later.
25
The
saved appear nude more conventionally in a large
Venetian woodcut around 1500, possibly later
than Signorelli (Fig. 43),
26
and as with Signorelli
they move toward the center of the scene. Such
scattered cases, in an area that has not been the
object of its own study, may indicate that others
exist. All of them may have been in such second-
ary works, subject to varied influences.
Yet Signorelli may well have responded to the
great northern art of his time, a possibility that the
monographic literature on him seems not to have
opened up. So, certainly, did his peers,
Ghirlandaio, his project-mate at the Vatican ear-
lier, and Filippino Lippi. Flemish painting was
strongly in view in Florence in the 1480s, the
time of Signorellis visit there. The fashion
famously affected the great Venetian collector
Cardinal Grimani, but his link to Orvieto is
hardly noticed. Grimani too visited Orvieto in
1493 and 1495 with Farnese, Borgia, and the rest.
More of interest is that in 1505 he built himself a
vacation house below the city walls, at the abbey
of Santa Trinit.
27
The act belongs to the tradition
of seeking out Orvieto as a pleasant refuge from
Romes heat. It must have followed earlier visits
that attracted him to the place, thus probably dur-
ing Signorellis years of work. The cardinal had an
art collection in his house in Venice, which was
inventoried after his death, and kept his antiqui-
ties in a palace in Rome. Some of his Flemish pic-
tures might have been there too, and accessible to
such artists as Signorelli. Grimanis Heaven and
Hell by Bosch (if the cardinals probable owner-
ship is accepted) are very unlike the standard
schema but suggest his concern with the theme.
Signorellis scene of the sheep is still more
unusual in showing male and female couples.
Their charm has been noticeable in detail photo-
graphs in books on Signorelli but has not
extended to any comment in their texts. Two
s i txor r i i i r:i x+ s + nr i xxr r n:. +
ri t. Anonymous Italian, c. 1500, Last Judgment,
woodcut.
Image not available
ri t. Giovanni di Paolo, The Blessed (detail of Last Judgment). Siena, Pinacoteca
ri t. Assembly of the Damned at Josaphat, side wall (cf. Fig. 27, :)
Image not available
Image not available
pairs are seen symmetrically, the couples at the
far left and right already pointed out. The only
pairs shown among Angelicos sheep comprise a
soul with an angel. Today the idea that in heaven
we rejoin our loved ones is another common-
place, so it may have seemed to go without say-
ing.
28
Happily the context in theological writing
has been studied by McDannell and Lang.
29
The
Gospels say that in heaven there is no marrying
or giving in marriage, and early church fathers
focus on each souls separate link to God. The
images of souls gazing up evoke that approach
neatly. A key text in favor of heavenly friend-
ships, by Cicero, was opposed by Augustine in
his City of God. But Augustine altered his views
in a later and less-known work, a letter of conso-
lation. In heaven, he writes, our dead will be
better known to us, and we will love them with-
out fear of parting. Other early Christian writers
echoed this, but the solitary view long domi-
nated. It is not surprising that humanist contexts
revived Ciceros viewpoint, through Petrarch
and Erasmus most famously and between them in
more detail through Valla. For Cicero, when the
newly dead reach heaven their relatives and
friends cordially greet, kiss, and embrace them.
This idea gains visual form in one astonishing
work before Signorellis, a panel painting of
about 1460 by the Sienese Giovanni di Paolo. A
second version by Giovanni, perhaps earlier, is
known in a fragment. Some souls here are
greeted by angels, as in Angelico, but others
form pairs with their friends (Fig. 44). Because
all are clothed, they can be identified by cos-
tume, and prove to be people who had shared a
similar life on earthfriars and nuns of the same
order, splendidly dressed young women, and
others. A few seem to be nameable individuals.
A bishop with an elderly nun has reasonably
been identified as Augustine with his mother
Saint Monica, and a reference to his letter would
seem to be intended, though that has not been
proposed.
30
Giovanni di Paolos composition of the Last
Judgment has the five-part design but differs
from Angelicos and all others noted above in
major ways. The Judging Christ is nude down to
his loincloth (the anticipation of Michelangelo
has been noticed, though not the precedents in
medieval French and Italian sculpture), and we
see below him neither Michael nor the symbols
of the Passion, but quite new persons. These
include the Eritrean Sibyl, famously called a
prophet of the Last Judgment by Augustine and
many after him. She in turn is flanked by Enoch
and Elijah, the two witnesses of the end of the
world, whose appearance at different points in
other Judgments will be noticed. The dead rise
from their tombs below these persons in a spec-
tacular pattern of writhing and twisting nudes.
Giovanni di Paolo is notorious for wholesale
thefts of design and here must be citing an
entirely different Last Judgment formula. There
may be a Flemish connection.
31
The nude Judg-
ing Christ has a famous forerunner in the Rohan
Hours of about 1425, and the vigorous action of
the rising dead has a forerunner in Rogier van der
Weyden. Such citations may appear far from
Giovannis local experience in Siena, but perhaps
not. When Rogier van der Weyden visited Italy
in 144950 he had one recorded Italian pupil,
Angelo Paccagnino, who was a Sienese.
The meeting of friends is less emphatic in Sig-
norelli than in Giovanni di Paolo, and they may
have an indirect common source. An attractive
possibility is in the humanist ideas mentioned,
starting with Petrarch. That context is always
recognized as present in the Orvieto wainscot,
but illogically has hardly been looked for in the
major scenes above like this one.
When we see the blessed sheep assembled on
the good side, then guided up to Christ, we natu-
s i txor r i i i r:i x+ s + nr i xxr r n:.
ri t. o Limbourg Brothers, Hell, page in Trs Riches Heures. Chantilly, Muse Cond
ri t. ; Bertoldo, Battle, bronze. Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello
Image not available
Image not available
rally expect on the basis of the whole tradition to
see the goats assemble and be sent to hell, oppo-
site them. Such imagery is indeed there, but
modified in a most original way. On the side wall,
to Christs left, the damned at Josaphat (Fig. 45)
constitute Signorellis most famous image in this
project and his entire career. Forceful violence is
offered with a meaning that validates it. Mon-
strous blue and green devils with quasi-human
musculature grasp, throttle, and subdue the
wretched sinners and, most notably, carry them
on their backs. Just as the sheep were herded,
here the goats are driven or hauled in the direc-
tion called for, to an area at the lower left where
flames shoot out.
32
They are a token of the mouth
of hell. All the versions of the Judgment by
Angelico had developed such an image, here
heightened to a new intensity, in which the dev-
ils with raised pitchforks squeeze the damned into
a panicked crowd. Signorelli, with an endless
series of variations, develops single combat situa-
tions between a devil and a soul, although each is
hardly a combat when we see it, for the souls are
near defeat. The pairs consistently relate in terms
of tension, clarified by gesture and muscle shape.
Devils pull or press, and souls make some attempt
to resist by pulling the opposite way. A kind of
explanatory model is provided by two pairs that
are given prominence in the center foreground.
In different formats, devils pull on the souls with
taut ropes, and the souls make things worse for
themselves by trying to pull away.
Just one precedent for this episode with the
rope pullers has emerged in earlier art, in the hell
scene of the very famous Trs Riches Heures of the
Duke of Berri (1415) (Fig. 46). There two devils,
each pulling a soul with a taut rope, dominate
the foreground. The rest of the scene has no sim-
ilarity to Signorellis, but it has been shown
instead to allude to the very different tradition of
the vision of Tundal,
33
a tradition that has no
rope pullers. Thus the scene in the Trs Riches
Heures seems to reflect two traditions: one from
Tundal, the other with rope pullers, the latter
alone shared with Signorelli. Recalling the case of
the nude souls, one is tempted to assign this tra-
dition also to northern Europe.
Such one-on-one combats seem to be with-
out precedent in scenes of the damned assem-
bled at Josaphat before Signorelli, but they were
common in scenes within hell. In Angelicos
benchback, and before Angelico, each pit shows
a devil attacking a soul. Signorellis transfer of
this violence to the prior moment of assembly
surely relates to his astonishing decision to show
nothing of the inside of hell at all. His reasons
are suggested below. One result has been to
induce the error, frequent in writers, of labeling
his Josaphat scene as hell; people believed that
there must be one.
The shifting of the combats from hell to the
staging area gave Signorelli a gift, which he used
with spectacular success. No longer isolated in
various sections of hell, the fights build up to a
swarming force. Like all painters in his culture,
Signorelli had always drawn nudes, even if few of
the drawings led to paintings, and had always,
too, like his peers, focused on expository gesture,
the best aid in making a story clear. He had never
had occasion to do this in a context of violence,
but he responded to the challenge at once when
it was offered. If there is no direct precedent for
this naked melee of torture in his era, an accessi-
ble aid was available in the bank of classical
sources that the period loved. Roman battle sar-
cophagi dealt solely with such swarming bodies
in combat; it was only necessary to omit the
horses. One such sarcophagus was in the artists
native Cortona, and anecdotes indicate that
Donatello and Brunelleschi had admired it ear-
lier.
34
But that work, with its prominent centaur,
seems less relevant than a second similar one.
This sarcophagus, in Pisa, was so admired by
Bertoldo that in 1480 he produced a large bronze
s i txor r i i i r:i x+ s + nr i xxr r n:.
derived from it (Fig. 47).
35
This bronze, by
Lorenzo de Medicis favorite sculptor, was in the
Medici house in Florence. Signorelli not only
would see it when he produced paintings soon
afterward for the same house, but also would
have known Bertoldo as a person. This connec-
tion seems not to have been pursued in mono-
graphs on Signorellia surprising omission in
studies where style influence is a main concern.
Before Bertoldo, Pollaiuolos engraving of the
Battle of Ten Nudes had already focused on a
web-like set of muscled bodies, though not with
the tight massing of the other cases. Signorellis
design abolishes all intervening air, and the
increased stress reinforces the theme of sin and
retribution now introduced. The significance
here of Signorellis Florentine experience will
turn up again; no other context offered him this
kind of stimulus.
The scene of the damned further overlays this
rectangle of struggle, derived from the sar-
cophagi, with a second structure. A diagonal
ri t. Descent into Hell, altar
wall (cf. Fig. 25, n)
Image not available
push of forces, from upper right to lower left,
starts from the three military angels in the sky
who herd the goats the way they must go.
Thrusting through the crowd, it is released when
they come to the flames that are emerging from
hell and are its only visual sign. The direction
signals inform us that hell is farther along this
vector and therefore still lower, and also around
the corner on the altar wall. Yet when we turn to
gaze at the imagery located there, it is not easy to
conceive of it as hell, and instead we meet
another unprecedented representation.
This latter imagery has to be understood in the
totality of the altar wall, to which it returns us.
The other segment of this wall, on Christs right,
was observed before, with its pull toward heaven.
Here on his left we are no longer aided by the
precedent of Angelicos rising dancers. In this
position, his panel had shown only a traditional
hell with segmented pits (Fig. 14). These are
labeled with names of the deadly sins, but not in
any apparent order from least to greatest or from
top to bottom, as is usual; they appear to be ran-
dom. Movement into this hell from the staging
area of the goats is inconspicuous, as in the artists
earlier benchback. Devils push sinners into hell
with pitchforks, through a cave mouth, but there
is no route from it to the pits. The two segments,
Josaphat and hell, are separate, as in Nardo
before, in contrast to the fluid journey of the
saved. Angelico might have explored other
devices in his Orvieto project, but there is no
evidence on that.
In Signorellis design this juncture seems even
more difficult. Beyond the flames that mark the
mouth of hell, our view confronts imagery that
seems to be about something else as well as
being separate spatially (Fig. 48). If the literature
has never addressed this as puzzling, it may well
be because this new imagery is in itself very
clear. It illustrates the opening cantos of Dantes
Inferno. We are given an alternate route to hell,
using Charons boat and the decision by Minos
regarding the suitable pit for each sinner. The
corresponding biblical report with flames,
Matthews Depart into everlasting fire, seems
to be ignored. Two quite incompatible texts of
great authority about entering hell are placed
side by side.
The group with Charon and Minos fills the
lower part of this tall, thin wall at Christs left.
The upper part shows two more military angels
engaged in herding the sinning souls, but they are
the only elements in this area that correlate with
the side wall showing Josaphat. Below them, land
is seen as a series of platforms, each projecting far-
ther out to us as we gaze from the top downward.
They suggest the mountain of purgatory in this
shape but not in any other way. The highest,
most distant, and smallest platform is filled with
the people of Inferno canto 3, verses 5257. They
run after a banner in a long procession, with end-
less variations of raised hands and bent legs. In its
small scale, this group sets up an anxious vibrato.
From the text, we are aware that we are inside the
gate marked Abandon all hope, but also that
the people we see are those rejected equally by
heaven and by the depths of hell.
The lower platforms reinforce the point that
we are in the preface of hell. We next see
Charon in his boat coming to the shore to
embark souls (lines 8284). These, naked like the
first and with chattering teeth (lines 100102),
evoke a similar nervous agitation, if on a some-
what larger scale. Below this, Minos appears, to
make his decisions (canto 5, 46), and we are
offered a view of large souls before his court.
Devils torture them while they stand there and
continue to do so while leading them away.
Then we encounter the bottom frame of the
fresco. From knowing the text, we can assume
that real hell is under it. If that is valid, the move-
ment downward from Minos would shortly
intersect with the movement diagonally down
from the flames on the side wall, and the two
options for entering hell would merge, but that is
not shown.
The assignment of roles to Charon and Minos
has one notable precedent in the tradition of Last
Judgments. Nardos fresco has repeatedly emerged
as a key model for Angelico and later instances of
the theme in quite varied details. His hell is an
exceptionally literal illustration of Dantes. It
shows not only the pits but also the introductory
events. The procession with the banner, Charon,
and Minos all appear at the top of his wall (Fig.
49), validating the motif, but the visual design is
different enough from Signorellis to make it
unclear whether they were the direct model.
More important, in Nardo the Dantean hell con-
tinues below them without interruption; there is
also no adjacent alternate entry. On Nardos altar
wall, the damned show fright, but there are no
pushing devils or fire, or any spatial indicators at
all. They make up a tall column of portraits. The
problem that Signorelli evinces may be thought to
appear only when concerns with space and time
become a large matter.
To us, the tall, narrow segments of Signorellis
altar wall, on the sides of the window, seem to be
a natural base for vertical scenes of action, up to
heaven and down to hell. Angelico certainly
ri t. , Nardo di Cione, detail of Fig. 22, right wall
Image not available
developed the former, but there is no indication
that he worked out anything corresponding for
the hell side. It is conceivable that he was con-
cerned with the difficulty that Signorellis work
then articulates, the conflict between the New
Testament and Dante, and that might have led
him to drop the issue. It would then follow that
the matching push-pull of the two walls, saved
and damned, is Signorellis invention, something
that writers on Signorelli seem not to have
addressed. It is actually one of his most powerful
formulations. A token of this is its adoption by
Michelangelo, with his famous lifted saved and
slowly falling damned, shearing against each
other. Writers have always noticed Michelan-
gelos exploitation of Signorelli in the Last Judg-
ment, but apparently not this large instance.
Some justification may be offered in that Sig-
norellis descent to hell is not in the flowing form
of his and Angelicos rise to heaven, which
Michelangelo then also offered for hell. The
solution Signorelli offered, with a series of steps,
may be regarded as an intermediate resolution of
the design problem. It is entirely innovative and,
for instance, is not preceded by illustrations in
manuscripts of Dante. The reason is that Sig-
norelli is presenting not Dantes trip but the eter-
nal nature of the entry to hell, thought to have
been reported correctly by Dante. His sharp
graphic presentation indeed recurs when he
comes soon after to represent scenes that really
are from the Divine Comedy, in his wainscot.
Signorelli thus painted the entire inner bay of
the chapel down to the wainscot, and showed on
it the entire standard imagery of the Last Judg-
ment, with one notable exception: the dead ris-
ing from the tombs. The power of his work
needs no insistence, giving his cultures associa-
tions with the tragic theme the new sense of
strong action and earthy reality it required. It
surely is surprising, then, that no parallels to his
approach emerged in his generation, and few
later. Much has been written about fears of an
apocalyptic end of the world in his time. Yet
however genuine, these at least did not generate
other Last Judgments as they have been thought
to generate this one.
36
This one, one may then
recall, was produced by the banal situation of a
fifty-year-old project required to be completed
by municipal honor. Michelangelos turn to the
work thirty years later for ideas only underlines
the absence of anything intermediate in date and
more modern. All this is difficult to fit into the
concept that such a work should belong to its
time, the more so in that it was recognized as a
triumph.
It may then be suggested that it does so
belong, but not along the apocalyptic lines com-
monly proposed. This suggestion may begin with
a Florentine text of 1496, the sermon by
Savonarola on dying well. It is very unusual,
both in the tradition of the theme and among his
works, in that it includes a request to his listeners
to have pictures painted of heaven and hell,
which should give us pause. (Almost all proposed
correlations between art and ideas in this period
cannot point to any mention of pictures in the
contemporary texts they discuss.) By further rare
luck, there soon followed a printed edition of his
sermon that included an illustration of our
theme, which was copied later.
37
The illustration
was about going to heaven or to hell (Fig. 50). At
the top, God or Christ sits surrounded by angels,
and at the bottom Satan sits among devils with
pitchforks. These images take most of the space
and plainly derive from the standard Last Judg-
ment. But no sheep or goats appear, or people
emerging from tombs. There is just one man, to
whom the sermon is addressed. He listens to
Death, who offers him a choice of up or down.
The time is not the end of the world (hence no
Josaphat), but tomorrow or next week when this
person will die. Its likeness to a Last Judgment is
most surprising in omitting purgatory, which is
s i txor r i i i r:i x+ s + nr i xxr r n:. ,
not relevant at the end of the world (when it
must cease to exist) but was the destination then
assumed to be the first stage of afterlife for any-
one. The omission links Savonarola to the Last
Judgment more closely.
Savonarola, to be sure, was an exceptional
thinker, so it is important to notice that this
image has antecedents long before. Heaven and
hell, without the end of the world, appear in a
remarkable fresco of 1412 in San Petronio,
Bologna. The fortunate survival of the patrons
instructions makes clear that the upper half shows
the glory of eternal life and that, in the lower
half, the painter must show the horrible punish-
ments of hell, the most he can (quantum plus
potest).
38
It is rightly noted that patrons instruc-
tions are rarely so full; no doubt the special sub-
ject explains that. It leaves the details in the end
to the artist, as noted, who seems to have turned
to a still earlier Bolognese panel painting. That
fourteenth-century work differs in details (adding
a Virgin above and Saint Michael below), but it
too omits all indications about the last days.
39
The
choice is offered to the viewer as his own death
approaches, even if he is not seen in the middle,
as in Savonarolas case. Savonarola may well have
known such works, as he came from Ferrara,
near Bologna.
The appropriation of formulas from the Last
Judgment for imagery about an individual death
appears elsewhere too in this general period. In
the tomb of Pope Paul II, mentioned earlier,
from about 1470, Last Judgment motifs seems to
intrude in quantity for the first time into the
memorial of one person. The pope is seen kneel-
ing, like a donor, among the saved. It is a real
Last Judgment, but he has priority. The formula
recurs in the related tomb of Cardinal Ammanati,
he of the Sienese connections, and in a variant in
the tomb in Rome of Bishop Coca (d. 1477).
This, like Savonarolas woodcut, excludes the last
days. Above his effigy, the bishop is seen kneel-
ing as Christ turns to bless him.
40
The Last Judg-
ment is reduced to that of one person, which
recalls the theological fights about particular
judgment, so fierce in the previous century.
Motifs from Last Judgment imagery are applied
to individual death even more directly in manu-
scripts of the period. In Books of Hours, the most
popular works of the time for devotional prayer,
the Last Judgment may illustrate the Office (ritual
text) of the Dead. The case of a Venetian breviary
from about 1430 was mentioned earlier. A study
of Books of Hours reports that it initially used the
Last Judgment for this purpose but later replaced
it with a portrayal of the funeral.
41
The Judgment
then appears in another part of the book, the
seven requests to Christ. The Rohan hours are a
spectacular instance.
, o nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
ri t. o Anonymous Florentine, 1497, Choice of Heaven or
Hell, woodcut.
Image not available
Earlier, the rareness of monumental Last Judg-
ments in the fifteenth century was puzzling in the
context of the Orvieto project, but it may seem
less so when this shifted allusion is taken into
account. Perhaps the absence of a standard
imagery involving the death of one person was
viewed as a problem and the Last Judgment was
pressed into service at first. If this is so, it may fol-
low that any viewer of a rare actual scene of the
Last Judgment, like Signorellis, might respond
with concern about his own death and immedi-
ate fate. That pattern would relate strongly to the
emphasis of sermons of the time on themes of
heaven and hell and on a persons ethics. In this
way one can think of the Orvieto frescoes as
being in the mainstream of their culture and
more readily understand their success. Sig-
norellis energy correlated with needs of his
viewers.
Yet that can only add to the surprise (already
strong without it) evoked by the portion of the
imagery of the inner bay not yet discussed. This
is the wainscot below (see Figs. 25, 26, and 27),
which the contract stipulated should to be given
over to grillwork and creatures.
42
The decora-
tive system it shows would soon acquire its stan-
dard name, grotesque. As is always
understood, the term grotesque derives from
the ornament used in ancient Roman painting
rediscovered in the 1480s in grottos that soon
became popular. The painter Pinturicchio, Sig-
norellis friend, signed a contract in 1502 to do
frescoes depicting the life of Pope Pius II for the
Piccolomini in Siena that provided for the orna-
ment to be grotesque, perhaps the first use of
that term. Most of Signorellis peers, Perugino
and Filippino Lippi as well as Pinturicchio, were
using such decoration by 1500, as a study focus-
ing on Signorellis employment of it has
observed.
43
Signorelli came to this fashion late,
first in his large cycle in the abbey near Siena. His
much more emphatic adoption of it in Orvieto
immediately afterward may reflect his sense that
the Orvieto project was different from anything
he had ever done, with classical overtones. When
he does take on the grotesque, his approach is
different from that of the other artists. The
squirming organisms he paints relate to scenes
above, notably the congested damned. Among
the other artists, Filippino is most similar, while
Pinturicchio produces neat and linear patterns.
The portrait heads and narratives from poetry
also included in the wainscot work are today its
most interesting aspects. They were not men-
tioned in the contract, so perhaps they were last-
minute additions, but they may have been
regarded as mere decoration, especially the
heads. Heads in rows were traditional in wain-
scots, like those of Angelico, mentioned earlier,
and those of Nardo, who was certainly influen-
tial on Angelico. They had appeared earlier in
Orvieto, in the Chapel of the Reliquary oppo-
site. The heads there, like most, were anony-
mous, beads on a chain to enliven the frame area.
One might call them typical of the Renaissance
(including the Tuscan trecento) in that they
make the frame human.
The variant from anonymous headsthat is,
the portraits of significant peoplehad appeared
earlier
44
(as already discussed), notably in
Angelicos work and then in Benozzo Gozzolis
cycle of 1452. From this it was deduced that such
heads were probably also included in Angelicos
Orvieto project and in his gavantone. From the
inclusion of Dante as one of those portrayed, in
Benozzos cycle
45
and also here in Signorellis, it
was argued that his head, at least, could be iden-
tified as one of those of the gavantone. A further
support for this view was that Dante separately
belonged to Last Judgments, as seen in Nardo.
Angelico would have demoted Dante from a
place among the saved to the wainscot, still on
the saved side, and let him take a place in the row
of heads. Later it will be argued that the row in
s i txor r i i i r:i x+ s + nr i xxr r n:. , +
Angelicos project may also have included
Giotto, also found earlier in that artists Last
Judgment in Florence and again in the Benozzo
wainscot of 1452. These two works were, after
all, the same ones that seemed to make it likely
that Dante was so included.
The wainscot today presents six heads besides
Dante; others have been lost. The identity of all,
other than Dante, has been the theme of vigorous
disagreement among writers on the chapel. All
the heads were hidden behind choir benches
about 1740, following the destruction of others
that were behind the new altar and on the
entrance wall.
46
When the benches were removed
in 1845, the heads attracted great interest, focus-
ing on the literary factor. The names for the heads
proposed by a writer in 1866 became accepted,
partly out of convenience, though the writer was
soon much criticized by another local scholar on
this and other matters, and some of his names are
quite implausible.
47
That Dantes is one of the heads (Fig. 51) is
clear to all, and not only because the portrait type
is the same as in many other images, though even
this head was identified wrongly in the eigh-
teenth century. The portrait is surrounded by
four roundels with little scenes in monochrome
illustrating scenes from cantos 14 of the Purgato-
rio. These of course include Dante as one of the
characters, and he is the same person as in the
portrait, with the same costume. Virgil is another
such character in the same scenes, and he too has
the same face and costume as another of the
wainscot portraits, on the opposite wall of the
chapel directly facing Dante (Fig. 52).
48
The four
monochrome roundels with him likewise illus-
trate a single short passage in book 6 of his
Aeneid. The subjects have always been recog-
, : nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
ri t. + Dante and scenes in cantos 14 of Purgatorio,
wainscot (cf. Fig. 26, t, n, i, J, k)
ri t. : Virgil and scenes of visits to Hell, wainscot (cf.
Fig. 27, n, i, J, k, i)
nized (even when the head of Virgil was erro-
neously identified as someone else). In the top
scene, the Sibyl shows Aeneas the golden bough
he will need to pass to the underworld (lines
13639); here she holds it as her attribute, though
in the text she merely tells him where to seek it.
She points to a cave entrance, at whose mouth
naked figures sit and gesticulate. These evidently
refer to a later moment, lines 27475: Before
the entrance itself, in the first opening of hell,
Mourning and Cares have sat down. The scene
thus blends several aspects of the beginning of the
journey. The other three scenes all illustrate a
short series of lines in Aeneass speech to the
Sibyl begging her to let him enter. He does this
by citing earlier heroes who had made the trip:
Orpheus was able to summon the shade of his
wife (line 119); then: what of great Theseus,
why recall Hercules (lines 12223). We are
shown Orpheus in one roundel playing his lute
before Pluto and Proserpina, to get their permis-
sion to rescue his wife Eurydice, but then, on
their way out, losing her to devils in another
roundel. The last scene shows Theseus and Her-
cules subduing the dog Cerberus at the cave
entrance. Although the subjects shown have
been plain to every writer, it is not always
observed that the only point bringing them
together is this passage in the Aeneid. That
doubtless has made possible the frequent failure
to see Virgil in the portrait. Recent literature,
however, has tended to notice the factor of cos-
tume that makes him clearly the subject.
A third portrait on the wainscot, next to Virgil,
is surrounded by four scenes that are all from the
story of Pluto and Proserpina (Fig. 53). That has
always been plain, but it has not always helped in
identifying the subject of the portrait. Ovid is the
most famous poet who tells the story of Pluto and
Proserpina, so it was natural that his name was
first proposed in 1866 and that Ovid has been a
popular choice as subject of this portrait since.
There is also a long tradition in favor of Claudian,
a late-classical poet whose poem On the Rape of
Proserpina is the longest account of the Pluto and
Proserpina story. Comparison of the particular
scenes in the roundels with both texts decisively
favors Claudian.
49
At the top, three jealous god-
desses, Venus, Minerva, and Diana, entice Proser-
pina to leave her safe house to pick flowers.
Meanwhile, at the bottom, Pluto emerges from
an eruption of the volcano Mount Etna, and we
see a giant pinned underneath. Pluto carries Pros-
erpina off in a third roundel, at the right, while a
repentant Minerva tries to stop him by using the
Gorgons head with its snaky locks. Finally, at the
left, Ceres hunts for her daughter, traveling in her
chariot drawn by dragons.
Ovids text makes no mention of motifs that
are major elements in three of these scenes. He
does not speak of the three goddesses who visit
ri t. Claudian and scenes from De Raptu Proserpinae
(cf. Fig. 27, c, i, r, r, t)
Image not available
Proserpina, or of Minervas use of the Gorgon
head, or of Ceress chariot with dragons. He
seems to present her on foot. If one reads Ovid
only, these discrepancies could seem to be the
painters additions, and that may have been what
happened. However, all these details are in Clau-
dian, as are all the other details shown in the
roundels. Claudians poem was not finished, and
his story stops just where the scenes do. Ovid
goes on to a grand resolution of the drama,
where it is agreed that Proserpina shall spend
alternate half-years on earth and in Hades. Clau-
dian is today not well known, and he was never
as famous as Ovid, but in the Renaissance he was
much more familiar than he is today. Ovid is the
natural answer for anyone who starts by checking
the most famous version of the story, which it is
natural to do if one looks at the scenes and works
back, as scholars must. But the artist or planner
worked in the opposite direction. He started
with a desire to show the story and looked for
the best account. This was not Ovids brief
report, which was included with many other sto-
ries in his Metamorphoses. A clue to the version
likely to be considered the standard one is found
in a comment by Chaucer in his Merchants Tale
(about 1390):
[Proserpina] . . . gadered floures in the mede,
In Claudian ye may the story reade,
How in his grisly carte he [Pluto] . . . [took her] . . .
(verses 98385)
Not only was the poem known, but the poet
was honored in Signorellis culture in central
Italy. A number of fresco series of portraits of
poets produced there include Claudian as well as
Dante, but not Ovid.
50
Claudian owes this status
to a myth that he was Florentine, so that Floren-
tine humanists called him a forerunner of their
modern series of great poets. In painting, the
phenomenon emerges about 1380 in Florences
Palazzo Vecchio, the city hall. The program was
set up by the chancellor, Coluccio Salutati, the
first Florentine figure to assert that humanism
was important for people in public life. The cycle
included three groups to be honored, two being
from ancient Rome. These began with the first
consul of Rome, Brutus, who was followed by
others from the period of the republic. The sec-
ond showed men of the Roman Empire, and the
third group comprised five Florentine poets,
Claudian first and Dante second. Salutati also
helped the chronicler Filippo Villani assemble his
group biography of notable Florentines, the first
such text in what became a long tradition. It
includes the same five poets starting with Clau-
dian, to whom Villani then adds Salutati himself,
and one other. Salutati was also added later to the
set of paintings in the Palazzo Vecchio. A variant
set of paintings was produced for the great hall of
Florences Guild of Notaries and Judges. A docu-
ment of 1406 tells of adding Salutati and Clau-
dian to a series done earlier. Autobiographical
writings of the Florentine Marco Rustici, about
144748, offer another version still. He writes of
a version of the same poets, beginning with
Claudian and including Salutati. These are then
seen in drawings in the margins of his manu-
script, the only visual survivor of this tradition
today. The obvious suggestion arises that this
repeated formula was a model, at least in part, for
what Signorelli did. (It has never been brought
up in the studies of the Orvieto series.)
Signorelli shows all three poetsDante, Virgil,
and Claudianwith laurel wreaths. They sit
behind windows, using the sills as desks. All have
open books before them, the nearest pages of
which lift up a bit, giving them an active part.
Signorelli used that motif with books in other
works. Virgil and Claudian both rest a hand on
the book to keep it open while they turn to each
other as if conversing. Dante has two books open
and is absorbed in one, while two other books sit
, nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
closed. The scenes surrounding both Virgil and
Claudian, crowded and agitated, with emphatic
expressive action, all directly echo the big scene
of the damned directly over them on the wall.
Dantes scenes, on the other hand, show mostly
mild interaction and are concerned with setting
up little subgroups with space between, to show
several episodes. These echo the big scene above
with the blessed. The difference in the two walls
might be interpreted, in one frequent art-historical
approach, as indicating different dates in Sig-
norellis process of work. But it may be as likely
that it is purposeful, to make each wall a harmo-
nious whole different from the other. It is also
suitable to Dantes status as a Christian who
belongs among the blessed, of whose ranks he is a
kind of footnoted member. Conversely, Virgil
and Claudian, under the damned, were pagans,
and Dantes authority reiterated that Virgil must
reside in hell, if in a mild upper area. Claudian
was at times claimed to have been a Christian
convert, but this view was not fully established.
Just as the latter two are a pair under the
damned, so too Dante shares with another por-
trait his place under the blessed. The man in that
portrait (Fig. 54), as a bookish person, also has a
book on his sill, like the other three, but in other
ways he is made to be very different. The most
obvious factor is that, whoever he is, the mono-
chrome roundels that surround him cannot illus-
trate any book by him. That is because they show
scenes from Dantes work, specifically Purgatorio
ri t. Salutati and scenes
from Purgatorio, cantos 58,
wainscot (cf. Fig. 26, i,
x, x, o, r)
Image not available
58. The story here spills from the Dante segment
rightward, just as the scene of the blessed above
moves its figures to the right, toward the entrance
to heaven. The man in this portrait likewise turns
to the right and up, and his sights are set on
heaven like those of the saved, if we are allowed
to read him as seeing what we see. Yet this does
not suffice to identify him for us, and that ques-
tion may be postponed for the added evidence
that other sources provide.
Of the scenes here, that from Purgatorio 6 has
special interest. In that canto the text chiefly con-
sists of a diatribe on the decadence of Italy. That
would be hard to illustrate, and it is not
attempted. Yet attention is suggested by one
detail in it, about civic feuds. Those named are of
the Montagues and Capulets, Monaldi and Fil-
ippeschi (lines 1067). The former names in fact
are the original kernel of the story of Romeo and
Juliet, suggesting the extraordinary reverberation
of Dantes slight allusions. In the present context,
that applies as well to the second pair of names.
The feud cited is in Orvieto, in which these
Monaldi, the same as the Monaldeschi often
encountered before, were soon to suppress the
other family entirely. A Monaldeschi of the late
sixteenth century published a family history, and
quotes this entire section of Dantes text. That the
family was called evil was not as important as the
fact that Dante had proved their importance. The
same Dante text then surely had importance also
for the painting of the chapel, where Purgatorio
18 is uniquely included (though this seems not
to have been noticed in Signorelli studies). It will
appear later that the Monaldeschi contributed a
large amount of money to pay for the work in the
chapel. This monochrome would have been an
oddly subdued acknowledgment.
It may be convenient here to take note of one
other unusual detail in the Purgatorio roundel
series. Canto 2 speaks of an angel coming to
shore in a fast little boat, con un vasello snelletto.
Yet the image shows no boat, and the angel is
holding a small dish (Fig. 55). In fact, the word
vasello has little dish as its chief meaning, while
boat more often appears as vascello. Still, there
is no doubt that Dante meant boat. The mis-
take is revealing, as mistakes often are, in this
case, the procedures used to produce the picture.
Whoever drew this image had the text only, and
no access to any prior illustration of the scene.
Moreover, because no better informed person
oversaw the work, the painter was left to his own
limited best resources. Without doubt, at some
later point someone better informed did see this,
but then it was decided not to make a correction;
evidently it was not important enough to matter.
It is rare to get inside a process to this extent.
Clearly the eight scenes of the Purgatorio signal
the most important poem being illustrated. The
, o nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
ri t. Detail of Fig. 51, scene from Canto 2 of
Purgatorio (cf. Fig. 26, n)
Image not available
eight compare with four scenes each of the
Aeneid and of Claudian. Besides, they are unique
in any church context. Then the series goes on
even further, to show cantos 9, 10, and 11. To do
this, the imagery continues around the corner on
to the altar wall, just as higher up the saved move
around the same corner to approach heaven. The
part of the Aeneid chosen and the work of Clau-
dian do share with the Purgatorio an identical rare
theme that is clearly the reason they were cho-
sen. They are not only all about the underworld,
but can also be more narrowly defined as
accounts of journeys made thither by a living
person who then returns to earth. That is true
both of Dante, who wrote a report of his trip,
and of others who simply had the experience:
Proserpina, Aeneas, and even Hercules, Theseus,
and Orpheus. They evidently owe their inclu-
sion to being cited by Aeneas when he makes
these journeys of theirs an argument for making
one himself. In just that way Dante in turn cited
Aeneass journey as a model for his own at the
beginning of the Divine Comedy. Still further, the
texts chosen all show that the dead have been
found to be happy, requiring the choice of Purga-
torio over the more common visual theme of the
Inferno. The souls in Purgatory are happy, con-
tenti, since they know they will reach heaven.
They reflect Dantes own name for his poem,
Commedia. Aeneas found the Elysian fields, and
Proserpina ruled Hades as queen. This all seems
relevant to the strange issue of how, uniquely,
they got into a cathedral, but still more material
needs to be gathered before trying to explain
that.
The man portrayed as a writer, next to Dante
and surrounded by the scenes from Purgatorio 58
(Fig. 54), is actually writing, unlike all the others
observed. He is thus an author but he has no lau-
rel. The absence of the poets wreath worn by
the three others must be intentional. This man
also differs from the others in that he has white
hair, signaling old age. His gaze upward toward
the scene of heaven evokes the idea that he was a
believing Christian, like his neighbor Dante, in
contrast to the two pagan writers opposite on the
side of the damned. It also seems likely that his
writing was also about the underworld. All this
narrows the possible hypotheses, but not enough
to the point of a name.
Yet one other clue here seems to have been
ignored. Not only do the four scenes from Purga-
torio surround this writer, forming a cross
scheme, above, below, and to the sides, but there
are also four other monochrome roundels, very
tiny ones, in the diagonals between the first four.
These show very clear scenes, commonly under-
stood in the literature, of Hercules defeating the
hydra, the bull, the lion, and Cacus (Fig. 56),
four of his standard labors. They have the same
s i txor r i i i r:i x+ s + nr i xxr r n:. , ;
ri t. o Hercules Defeating Cacus, and grotesque
ornament (detail of Fig. 54)
Image not available
vibrating zest of drawing that Signorelli gives his
figures of larger scale. Yet why they are here
seems not to have been the subject of curiosity.
Because the other three portraits are all sur-
rounded by scenes from the authors writings
that identify those authors for us, and the scenes
here from Purgatorio 58 cannot do that, it seems
reasonable to think that the Hercules scenes
might replace them in that way. No other raison
dtre seems to be on offer.
There is one author, and apparently only one,
who wrote a book with the labors of Hercules as
its theme: Coluccio Salutati, a devout Christian
who lived to be seventy-six, consistent with his
unique white hair. He left the book incomplete,
which explains the unfinished page on the sill.
His appearance prior to Signorelli in painted
cycles of writers, the ones also showing Dante
and Claudian, his neighbors here, was noted
above (with a purpose now revealed). This may
be useful to counteract the natural tendency to
react to all this by thinking someone like Salutati
would not form part of the same category of
people to be represented that the great poets do.
His title, Four Books on the Labors of Hercules, is
also a neat fit for the four little roundels. Of much
greater concern is that the title does not match
the contents of the book well. Only its third book
presents the labors, giving a summary list of
thirty-one. The fourth and longest book con-
cerns, instead, descents to the underworld. Salu-
tati recounts the journeys by Hercules, Orpheus,
Theseus, and Aeneas, a list that exactly matches
the roundels with Virgil. (In an early draft he
reported Castor and Pollux too, but then dropped
them. They are replaced by Amphiarios, who,
however, Salutati writes, did not so much
descend as be dropped.) The most recent student
of the wainscot has duly noticed that this work of
Salutati corresponds to it.
51
He shows that the
scheme of the descents into hell . . . can be
explained though the reading of book 4 of Salu-
tati and specifies details. Others had made the
point more briefly, but none mentioned the small
Hercules roundels, much less identified the por-
trait as Salutati. Nonetheless, their findings are
supportive here.
It is more difficult to understand the wainscot
images on the altar wall (Fig. 25), and that is only
in part because of destruction.
52
At the center,
under the big window, the imagery (as known
from early descriptions) showed a similar scheme,
a portrait surrounded by four scenes. At the sides,
however, the system shifted to show scenes only,
again in monochrome. On each side there were
six scenes in two vertical sets of three each. On
both sides the lowest scene of the inner set,
toward the center, is lost, as is the entire central
set of a portrait with four scenes (apart from a
fragment of one scene).
These vertical sets of three scenes comprised,
in the inner sets nearer the center, a rectangular
scene in the middle with circular ones above and
below it. Conversely, the outer sets near the cor-
ners showed a circular scene in the middle with
rectangles above and below. This scheme evi-
dently alludes to the pattern discussed for the side
walls, with rectangular portraits between invari-
able circular scenes. Here, where portraits are
absent, some of the scenes are rectangular. This
retains a trace of the previous pattern, maintain-
ing a continuity of two shapes even when there is
a shift from including portraits to excluding
them. The scheme, which seems not to have
been noticed, again evokes a concern for having
patterns that unify the whole. The frames of the
vaults were seen to have been designed in the
same way.
The parts now lost were fortunately reported
by an attentive viewer shortly before they were
sacrificed in 1715 to the new larger altar.
53
That
viewers text was only published in 1996, so that
fresh data is now available on the missing sec-
tions. A check of the way he describes the sur-
, nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
viving parts shows that his descriptions are accu-
rate, though his identifications of subjects are
often wrong. (He did not recognize Dante.)
When the new evidence is integrated with the
old, entire groups of the wainscot images can be
given more valid readings, helping to remove
some entrenched errors.
The scenes in the wainscot on the altar wall
that are easiest to identify are the outer sets of
three, near the ends. The set on the left shows, as
mentioned, scenes from cantos 9, 10, and 11 of
Purgatorio, continuing from the earlier cantos
around the corner on the side wall. Though the
series continues, the pause between cantos 8 and
9 is meaningful, and utilized by the designer. The
move around the corner coincides with the
change from Dantes horizontal walk, in ante-
purgatory, to his entrance to purgatory proper,
where he climbs the mountain. In the episode
from canto 9 chosen, he seeks admission, and in
the canto 10 scene he passes through the gate.
We are shown a bit of the inside of purgatory
only in canto 11, the last scene. This emphasis on
the preliminary phase matches what occurs else-
where in the chapel. Only the entrance to
Dantes hell, completed by the incident with
Minos, is seen just above the lower frame of the
scene of the damned descending, as discussed. In
the wainscot below that frame we shall see some-
thing of the parts of hell to which Minos con-
signs souls, but in this case too just the first bit of
it. This drastic change from the prime focus on
hell and its horrors in earlier Last Judgments has,
surprisingly, not been addressed in the literature.
It is analogous to the way the classical visits to the
underworld were treated in the selections from
s i txor r i i i r:i x+ s + nr i xxr r n:. , ,
ri t. ; Scene from Canto 11 of Purgatorio (cf. Fig. 25, k)
Image not available
Claudian and Virgil. In the former, Proserpina is
shown only aboveground. She is queen of hell in
one of the stories from Virgil, but the other three
show heroes at hells entry seeking to visit or, in
Orpheuss case, to exit.
An explanation of this hesitation to show the
inside of hell is perhaps available in Salutatis dis-
cussion of the descents. His book 4 opens by ask-
ing whether we really know there is a hell,
apparently referring to the lack of any account of
it in scripture. He replies that our best aid to
gaining salvific knowledge on the matter is from
the poets, such as Claudian. This seems to offer a
full answer to the puzzle of the wainscot segment
of the fresco cyclereplacing the standard image
of hell with the reports of the poets. Indeed, it
would also explain the inclusion in the chapel of
the visit to purgatory, taken from Dantes poem,
which Salutati does not mention. It would be a
new extrapolation in Orvieto. To be sure, Salu-
tati notes, the poets data on the matter is limited,
as they cannot prophesy. Even if sometimes
inspired, they can only describe the past, without
full certainty. And they work with allegorical
veils; we shall see this aspect shortly.
The scene from Purgatorio 11 shows only one
incident from the canto, unlike all the rest after
canto 1. This might evoke closure, but it does
not explain the specific choice, starting at line 73,
within this survey of the worst sinners, the
proud. We see Dante bend to talk with souls car-
rying heavy loads (Fig. 57). One soul, Dante
writes, twisted and saw me, a detail Signorelli
makes vivid. The speech the soul thereupon
makes includes the famous comment on the fame
of Giotto, the only mention of a painter in the
Divine Comedy. It is attractive to think Signorelli
was drawn to that point and chose this single
motif for that reason. It might even have stimu-
lated him to extend his series to canto 11.
Giottos figurative presence in the wainscot
has, however, a more ordinary possible explana-
tion. The tradition that artists include their self-
portraits in Last Judgments was discussed earlier.
54
Giotto (or more precisely his workshop) had
done so in the Last Judgment in the Bargelloof
course on the side with the saved, as usual, which
is also the side where this rectangle appears in
Orvieto. The chronicler Villani had mentioned
this Giotto self-portrait and added one other fact,
that it was along with a portrait of Dante. Here
in Orvieto the allusion to Giotto is bracketed
with the portrait of Dante and scenes from his
work in this part of the wainscot.
One other case of paired portraits of Dante
and Giotto was noted above, that by Benozzo
Gozzoli painted soon after he had worked in
Orvieto, and in a wainscot, one where the two
men seem quite irrelevant to the theme, the life
of Saint Francis. It was argued that he might have
taken the notion of a Dante portrait from a simi-
lar portrait on Angelicos gavantone, known to
him, showing Dante in the wainscot. By exten-
sion, it seems plausible that he might also have
taken his adjacent head of Giotto from the same
source, in which Angelico had shown the older
artist also among the saved. In that case we
would have Signorelli echoing the gavantone too,
with Dante and with a figurative allusion to
Giotto.
When it is considered that this scene is the
only one actually inside purgatory that we are
given, it may be linked to the only scene of the
wainscot actually inside hell (at least in any literal
form), the one where Orpheus plays and sings.
That scene matches the one of canto 11 in that
both celebrate artists, a quality in which they are
also alone. That can plausibly be called inten-
tional. It also recalls Salutatis point that what we
learn about the underworld is from poets.
This completes the vertical set of three scenes
at this corner of the altar wall. Still moving to the
right, we meet the second analogous set of such
monochromes, nearer the center of the wall (see
+ o o nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
Fig. 25). The statements offered by the images are
in a different key, not narrative. The top roundel
is agreed to be a clear figure of the allegory of
Charity (Fig. 58). She is seen in the standard way,
suckling a child and flanked by two others with
flaming torches. These two motifs symbolize
Charitys double character: love for ones neigh-
bor and for God.
55
She is shown in the same way,
in slightly earlier works, by Pollaiuolo, in his
painted set of virtues in Florence for the law court
of the merchants, and on both his papal tombs, for
Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII. The latter of these
two monuments in Rome was finished in 1497.
Signorellis Charity tramples on a prone female
figure who bites herself. This is a known if less
common symbol of the vice Envy, one of those
often taken to be complementary to Charity.
56
If these identities are clear, it is not clear why
they are on this wainscot. The literature has gen-
erally taken care of the simple identities and not
asked that other question. The same has been
true of the monochromes that are viewed next.
Yet it does not seem likely that these are isolated
or autonomous images. As soon as the matter is
articulated, it seems likely that they are related to
the Last Judgment and to the nearby images.
In this case one would seek some continuity to
this Charity from Purgatorio 11, the last previous
image, if we continue to go from left to right.
That indeed fits, for after dealing with Pride on
canto 11, Dante turns next to Envy, and he dis-
cusses it in complement with Charity. (He had
discussed Pride in complement with Humility, a
common formula.) The text of Dante, it turns
out, is still being illustrated on the wainscot but
shifts from literal narrative to the veil of allegory,
if an easy one. One might argue that the preced-
ing scene from canto 11 had already made a sim-
ilar shift, if we claim that its true theme is not
what is shown but instead the allusion to Giotto.
Such a shift seems to be supported not only by
Salutatis cited remark, that poets inform us
about the underworld through veils of allegory.
That might indeed suffice to explain what hap-
pens here. Still more suggestive, however, is
what Dante said a little earlier, in Purgatorio 8,
lines 1920. This passage has understandably fas-
cinated learned commentators of all periods and
so has become famous. It is one of two similar
passages; the other, in Inferno 9, line 61, will be
discussed shortly. In Purgatorio 8 the lines follow a
description of two angels with green wings, an
odd motif. Dante tells us to be watchful here, for
the veil is so thin that it is easy to penetrate it.
Signorellis image (Fig. 59) shifts from all preced-
ing presentations of canto 8, in illustrated Dante
texts, by making these angels dominate the
scene.
57
Thus we viewers are also told to watch
for the allegory. All commentators have con-
curred that what the angels symbolize is the
virtue Hope. Being one of the three theological
virtues in the standard set, which in purgatory are
combined with the other set of four civil virtues,
Hope prepares us to meet another of the three,
s i txor r i i i r:i x+ s + nr i xxr r n:. + o +
ri t. Charity and Envy (cf. Fig. 25, i)
Image not available
Charity. Thus, when we come to the second
segment of purgatory, with Charity and Envy,
we are prepared to be given their images in alle-
gorical form.
The set of three monochromes with Charity at
the top has lost the third and lowest one, but the
newly available description gives a full report. It
confirms the present reading nicely, for it turns
out to have shown the third and last theological
virtue, Faith. Faith was shown figured as a
woman wearing a laurel, a chalice in her hand,
and adored by two small boys, one on each
side.
58
The chalice is used only as a symbol of
faith, in European allegory, so that the writers
identification of this image is clearly correct.
59
The two boys are unusual but are assigned to
Faith in 1504 in an image of her that again is a
monochrome in a roundel, the only one besides
+ o : nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
(above) ri t. , Scene from Canto 8 of Purgatorio (detail
of Fig. 54; o in Fig. 26)
(right) ri t. oo Raphael, Faith, Hope, and Charity. Rome,
Pinacoteca Vaticana
Signorellis known to me. This is in Raphaels set
of three theological virtues, Faith, Hope, and
Charity (Fig. 60). This unique match between
Raphaels Faith and the Faith of Signorelli, as
known from the newly published description,
seems to support neatly an earlier proposal that
Signorellis Charity was a model for Raphaels in
that same set.
60
While Purgatorio presents Hope in canto 8,
through allegory, and Charity in cantos 1214,
presented allegorically in Orvieto, there is hardly
any mention in the text of Faith. However, the
set of three as a group appears, again allegorically,
in Purgatorio 29.12126. This is the account of the
earthly paradise at the top of the mountain, and
we are alerted to their presence through their
symbolic colors. Green is again the color for
Hope. The scheme in Orvieto, then, draws the
Image not available
Image not available
roles of three virtues from separate passages in the
Purgatorio, which seems unique in the wainscot
iconography but would hardly be surprising.
61
This vertical set of three monochromes, with
Charity at the top and Faith at the bottom,
includes a larger scene in the middle, a rectangle
(Fig. 61). It has been given a variety of readings,
but all have isolated it from the Last Judgment
theme and the nearby monochromes. The pres-
ent approach would obviously imply that it is
matched to a passage in Purgatorio somewhere
between canto 13 (with Charity and Envy, who
are painted above it) and canto 29 (with Faith,
who is painted below it) but in a nonliteral way.
The image has six figures, each with individual
gestures or attributes. This greatly narrows the
possibilities and offers many clues.
The small winged boy can only be Cupid. He
is seen disciplined by a woman, who must be his
mother, Venus. The motif is found around Sig-
norellis time, notably in small bronze reliefs.
62
We are thus in a context of classical myth.
Another womans attribute is a banner with an
ermine, always a symbol of chastity or purity.
63
The one person who could be so tagged and
who also shares a classical context with Venus is
her fellow goddess, Diana. We have then a polar-
ity of the chaste and the eroticwhich readily
fits Purgatorio, where contrasts of each virtue and
the corresponding sin are in fact a main theme, as
seen with Charity and Envy. They simply work
through the vehicle of a classical allusion here. In
fact lust, the deadly sin luxuria, is contrasted with
chastity in the final section of Purgatorio (cantos
2526). All the sections include exemplifications
of the virtue and vice in question in the form of
very elliptical references to famous stories, some
from classical myth. In the section on Chastity
and Lust there is just one classical example of
their polarity, and it contrasts Diana and Venus.
s i txor r i i i r:i x+ s + nr i xxr r n:. + o
ri t. o+ Diana and Calisto (cf. Fig. 25, x)
Image not available
The reference, which we are expected to recog-
nize and expand as in all other cases, reads:
Diana stayed in the wood, and expelled Elice,
who had felt Venuss poison (25.13032).
Chastity exiles the victim of Lust.
This is somewhat easier to recognize when
Elice is replaced by the more usual name Cal-
isto, the same person. The story is the one seen
in a famous work by Titian. Dante tells a later
part of her story, again elliptically, in Paradiso
(31.3233). It refers to a zone, the north,
which Elice covers daily, circling with her son
whom she loves. Elice and the son are now a
constellationthe bear, or big and little dipper
which circles the north only. We are required to
fill in the rest of the story, using the same proce-
dure we need a few lines earlier (Purgatorio
25.129) in an easier example, to realize that the
Virgin Marys chastity at the Annunciation is sig-
naled by nothing more than her brief phrase I
know no man (Virum non cognosco).
Calistos story is most famously and more fully
recounted in the Metamorphoses of Ovid
(2.409532). Calisto, one of Dianas virginal
nymphs, was out hunting with her bow (arcum,
line 414) when she was raped by Jove. When her
pregnancy was noticed, Diana expelled her from
the wood (nemus, 455) that Dantes line empha-
sized. Yet Joves betrayed wife, Juno, remained
furious (saeva, 470) and turned Calisto into a
bear. Years later her full-grown son, Arcas, a
hunter, attacked her with his spear (telus, 489).
(The years between pass in one line, favoring the
early and late phases.) To this murder Jove
responds by turning mother and son into the
constellation, as in Dantes second passage, while
Juno continues her vengeance by restricting
them to the north.
The monochrome shows all the dramatis per-
sonae of all the phases of the story, and no one
else (other than Cupid as Venuss associate).
Diana, identified by her chaste ermine, is speak-
ing to Calisto, identified by her bow. Her son
Arcas, close by her, is identified by his spear.
Juno gesticulates in her fury, while Venus appears
as the correct allegory of Lust, named by Dante
as the complement to chastity that an illustration
to Purgatorio needs. To use Salutatis approach,
the myth from the poem is used by the painter to
show the work of vices and virtues through a
veil. The one factor that is not explained in this
series of monochromes by this reading is Sig-
norellis choice of only some ledges and cantos of
Purgatorio, but he did work that way. In the
scenes introducing the Inferno he completely
skipped canto 2.
Moving to the right again on the wainscot of
the altar wall, the next group is the almost totally
lost central group. The recent conservation has
shown that the familiar scheme with a square
author portrait and four surrounding roundels
recurred here, just as described by the early
writer Clementini. He called the portrait and
the roundels the classical poet Statius accompa-
nied by scenes of souls tormented by punish-
ments, scourges, and others from his epic the
Thebaid.
64
A tiny fragment of such a scene of
punishment has now been recovered. This pro-
posal that the portrait was of Statius gains support
from evidence its proponent Clementini could
not know. Dante makes Statius a character in
Purgatorio, introducing him in canto 21 and keep-
ing him present to the end in canto 33. It would
thus be logical to find him on the wainscot, to
the right of and thus later than the figurations of
cantos 1214 (top), 2526 (middle), and bottom
(2931) just surveyed.
Clementini offers a different justification for
Statius being here, pointing out that the Thebaid
too reports on the underworld, like Dante, Vir-
gil, and Claudian. (One might add that there are
few other candidates left.) Statiuss most promi-
nent relevant passage (4.543645) describes not a
journey but a vision. Souls fight one another;
they are not scourged, as Clementini says Sig-
norellis are. (The preserved fragment is too small
to tell which is the case in the fresco.) The
writers citation is oddly mistaken. He first
wrongly cites the second book of the Thebaid as
the passage about the underworld, and then gives
a quotation neither from that book nor from the
correct book 4, but partly from book 8 and partly
from Lucretius. The former passage concerns the
judging of the souls, and the latter, ironically,
argues that the underworld is an illusion of ours.
The error may be helpful for our needed under-
standing of the writers working method.
65
Moving still to the right on the wainscot of the
altar wall, we are now under Minos and the
descent toward hell, from Inferno 4. Once again
there are the two vertical sets of three mono-
chromes each, first the one under the side win-
dow and then the one close to the right corner
(Fig. 25). In this area the main vector is not
toward the right but downward, as the sequences
of damned souls from Charon down had estab-
lished. Within the Minos group shown, just
above the base line of the main figuration and its
molding, the lowest figure is a green devil tor-
menting a sinner who offers slight resistance (Fig.
48). As before, it seems that we are meant to jump
over the molding and continue down into the
wainscot area, for the first imagery found when
we do so is a repeat of that same grouping. Three
devils, in a rectangular monochrome, torment
three souls with knife, knout, and scourge (Fig.
62). The previous kind of rightward movement,
along the wainscot, would not bring us to this
s i txor r i i i r:i x+ s + nr i xxr r n:. + o
ri t. o: Devils and the Lustful (cf. Fig. 25, r)
Image not available
monochrome as the first we would encounter
after the Statius set, for it is not in the nearest ver-
tical set of three but in the farther one, in the cor-
ner. However, it is the first met in a downward
progress from Minos, because it is a half notch
higher than the top scene of the other set. The
latter is displaced downward by the side window.
(Fig. 25 does not show this difference in height of
the two vertical sets.)
A downward gaze, from Minos to this wain-
scot scene, also shifts us from color to mono-
chrome as we pass the molding. One might
consider that to be a denial of their association.
But the contrary is indicated from the text of
Dante at just this point. Here (Inferno 5.28) he
reaches a place mute of all light (dogni luce
muto). It brings us into the second circle of hell,
with the lustful sinners. The painter has elegantly
let the formal conditions of the wall system rein-
force the tone of his storyin both senses, literal
and figurative.
There is another shift when we jump the
molding. Unlike any of the sinners above, one of
those punished here is female. This is also unique
among all the monochromes in this area. Dantes
text on the lustful, not unexpectedly, likewise
assigns women a role rarely met in his other cir-
cles. The monochrome then seems to belong as a
scene of this lustful circle, and again is not to be
explained (as has commonly happened) in isola-
tion from others of the set. Dante gives names to
three male lustful sinners, Achilles, Paris, and
Tristan, and four females, Semiramis, Dido,
Cleopatra, and Helen, apart from telling the story
of Paolo and Francesca.
In this area the monochrome at the top of the
inner row (Fig. 63, left), under the side window,
is the second highest, a half-unit lower than the
one just described (Fig. 62). The theme of Her-
cules defeating the centaur is always properly
named. Signorellis fighting pairs usually show a
clear loser, often prone, but here they are in ten-
sion. The energy conceals the artifices of the for-
mal design. The right angle between the centaurs
upper body and lower horizontal segment, pres-
ent in the usual way, is made to connote stress,
complementary to the forward bend of Hercules
body. That quality is reinforced in that the cen-
taur is held upside down by upright Hercules, a
formal emblem of victory given formal abstrac-
tion by being shown from the back. The up and
down positions and the view from the back insis-
tently restate a schema of reversal.
The labors of Hercules in the Renaissance are a
favorite allegory of reason overcoming one or
another kind of evil. In a letter of 1477, Ficino
wrote that reason in us is named Hercules, a
text rightly cited as exemplary by Chastel.
66
His
defeat of the lion always means overcoming
anger, but other victories receive shifting labels.
To make the centaurs mean lust is well estab-
+ o o nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
ri t. o Monochromes on altar wall wainscot, right side
(cf. Fig. 25, x, o, r, _, r)
Image not available
lished, if not invariable, on the basis of the story
of Hercules suppressing their drunken rape at a
wedding. Fulgentius, whose early medieval
mythography was printed in Florence in 1490,
said that centaurs connote men made bestial by
carnal lust.
67
The suppression of lust by reason is
thus a ready reading of this monochrome, which
then would again label neatly the theme of lust
and its complement in canto 5. In it Dante
defines precisely what the lustful do that is
wrong: they make reason submit to desire (line
39). Hercules with the centaur makes desire sub-
mit to reason, and in the design system of this
monochrome shows this to be a reversal. It is
surely relevant to the choice of such imagery that
Poliziano, the learned poet of the Medici court,
taught Michelangelo in 149192, when the
sculptor was a sixteen-year-old beginner, the text
about the lustful centaurs, heated by wine and
love, defeated by Hercules. The result was the
marble relief of the battle of the centaurs.
68
Under this roundel, a rectangular mono-
chrome presents the end of a fight, with a man
on the ground overcome by three others (Fig.
64). Unlike any of the twenty-three mono-
chromes seen on the wainscot so far, this one
presents only nude human beings. In other
scenes nudity had connoted the souls in purga-
tory, but these are not such, so far as anyone has
suggested or as seems possible to associate with
s i txor r i i i r:i x+ s + nr i xxr r n:. + o ;
ri t. o Death of Achilles (cf. Fig. 25, o)
Image not available
any story. This culture used nudity, in contexts
that otherwise exclude it, for scenes of combat,
and that seems to be the reference here.
69
The
theme has consistently been called the story of
Oionos. The label goes back to the not very reli-
able identifications of the eighteenth-century
observer and has shown great power of retention.
The tale is so obscure in the written sources that
one may think it has not been checked, for it
does not fit the imagery very well, and the title
may have survived because no other seemed ever
to be available. Though the story is part of the
Hercules legend, it is absent from the standard
texts on him by Ovid and Boccaccio, the sources
most used in this period, as well as from Salutatis
book on Hercules. Its sole classical base is Apol-
lodoruss compendium of myths, available only
in Greek manuscripts until 1555, and even then
of such limited interest that a second printing
came only in 1599. The one classical allusion to
it, in Plutarchs Moralia, is an abbreviated version
that could not have provided the motifs of the
wainscot painting.
70
Oionos, the story goes, went
to help his friend Hercules in a task and hap-
pened to be annoyed by a barking dog. He threw
stones at it, and its angry young owners killed
Oionos with clubs (skutalois). Hercules killed
them in turn. The picture shows no Hercules, no
dog, and just one stick, hardly a club, wielded by
the most distant of the attackers. Again no link to
other monochromes or the Last Judgment is
offered. It is easier to infer why the early observer
might have liked this suggestion.
71
The procedure of moving forward with the
text of Dante again seems to offer a better option.
When he gave three examples of men damned
for lust, he cited two by their names only. Only
Achilles gets more; he is presented as the great
Achilles, who fought with love up to the end
(lines 6566). The story thus elliptically cited, in
the fashion seen before, is not in the Iliad but in
the popular medieval romance of Troy, as Dante
commentators have regularly explained.
72
Achilles, falling in love with a Trojan princess,
was lured into the city to meet her and there
ambushed and killed, precisely, then, fighting to
the end. The standard Dante commentary of
Signorellis time, by Landino, expands the
account to say he came with one friend and was
killed by Paris and twenty companions.
73
The
monochrome may be proposed to represent this,
abbreviated to a few active figures in a way
accepted at the time. The narrative is a lesson of
the same point that desire subdues reason.
74
One
of the medieval writers on Achilles drew the
inference here that he exemplifies those from
whom love takes away reason (senno).
75
Desire
drew Achilles to be killed.
The destroyed roundel at the bottom of this set
of three was reported to show Hercules wound-
ing Pluto with a three-pointed weapon,
76
but
the identification as Hercules is hardly possible,
because tridents belong to Neptune only. (The
early writer seems to have believed that Hercules
was the subject of this set of three scenes.
77
)
Whether Pluto was rightly named is not possible
to check, but a good argument for thinking he
was so is the presence of unquestioned Pluto
images elsewhere on the wainscot, with Proser-
pina and Orpheus. A resemblance between them
and this figure would be a likely enough basis for
the writer to have called this figure Pluto too (and
no other emerges), and it would then be proba-
ble. Yet no story seems to exist with Pluto
wounded by anyone, Neptune or another. That
makes it all the more interesting that the sole
mention of Pluto by Dante has him being over-
come as if by a sea tempest, and that this takes
place in a passage of the Inferno just subsequent to
those that have been noted. We have moved to
the next circle beyond the lustful, that of the glut-
tonous. The travelers find Pluto babbling a
famous nonsense line and then collapsing, in the
same way in which swollen sails fall when the
mast breaks (Inferno 6.115, continued in 7.1).
The force that collapses the sailthat is, a sea
storm, is being called the equivalent of what col-
lapses Pluto, and the way to personify or allego-
rize a sea storm is to show Neptune on the attack.
A god punishes the figure of Gluttony, as Her-
cules above punished Lust. For us today the figu-
ration seems troublingly indirect, but it seems to
match the other cases here without difficulty.
The final adjacent set of three additional verti-
cal monochromes, at the corner (Fig. 63, right),
was initiated at the top with the lustful men and
women already described, attacked by demons.
The theme of the two scenes below has always
been easily understood, but again has all the
more escaped connection with the context of the
chapel. The ease of reading their autonomous
content indeed may have encouraged a general
lack of concern about this other factor. They
show Perseus and Andromeda, familiar at the
time from Ovids Metamorphoses (4.8405.234).
In the upper scene is the very popular image of
Andromeda tied to the rock, prey to a dragon,
which Perseus attacks with his sword. The lower
one shows the less well known sequel, when
their marriage feast is invaded by the brides pre-
vious suitor, Phineus, whom Perseus turns to
stone by displaying the gorgon head (Fig. 65). It
seems not to have been remarked that the two
incidents match Ovids division of his account
s i txor r i i i r:i x+ s + nr i xxr r n:. + o ,
ri t. o Perseus and Phineus (cf. Fig. 25, r)
Image not available
between his books 4 and 5, confirming that his
text is the source used.
Signorellis one divergence from Ovid is to
show Perseus coming toward Andromeda on his
winged horse, Pegasus. In Ovid he flies to her on
winged sandals. The motif of riding the horse, as
Lee showed in a special study, comes from the
compendium of myths of Pierre Bersuire. This
fourteenth-century text was copied in many
manuscripts with variants.
78
The riding of the
horse remained a rare option in illustrations and
seems to be represented otherwise only in French
manuscript illustration up to this time. Nothing
in Signorelli is in conflict with Bersuires account.
That Signorelli utilized this convenient book
is confirmed in a remarkable way. One of the
few Italian-language manuscripts of Bersuire, a
unique variant, is richly illustrated. One scene
shown in this fifteenth-century volume (Fig. 66,
bottom) was copied closely in Signorellis scene
of the invaded wedding banquet (Fig. 65).
79
The
entry of the invaders at the right, that table top-
pling at the left, and even the broken dishes in
front recur. The oddity is that the Bersuire illus-
tration does not represent this story at all. It is
about the other invaded wedding mentioned
above, the one where Hercules repelled the cen-
taurs. That was the story that Signorelli turned
into an emblem in the other adjacent set of
monochromes, with Hercules subduing a cen-
taur. The text about the carnal centaur, as men-
tioned above in that connection, was published
in 1490 in Florence in another variant version of
Bersuire, but it was not illustrated.
How Signorelli happened to appropriate the
composition of the centaur wedding story, as
presented in the manuscript, for his Perseus wed-
ding story is clear. The same page of the manu-
script with this Hercules/centaur illustration also
has the text with information on the Perseus
myth. (Its illustration shows a quite different part
of the Perseus legend.) When Signorelli looked
up Bersuire on Perseus for ideas, the illustration
offered no help. Yet on the very same page (Fig.
66) luck offered him a composition he could use,
by shifting its subject to Perseus. That this con-
sultation of the book involved the painter him-
self, not only a humanist adviser, is proved by the
use of the design system. What further emerges is
the general use of Bersuire for the wainscot.
It remains to understand why the Perseus myth
was chosen in the first place. Once again the same
procedure offers an answer, as we move to the
next segment of the Inferno, beyond the glutton-
ous of canto 7. In the next circle, of the angry, the
three furies initially block the gate of the city of
Dis to the travelers. Troubled that they may fail
to keep Dante and Virgil out, they cry:
+ + o nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
ri t. oo Stories of Perseus and Hercules, drawings, in
Libellus de Imaginibus Deorum, Vat. Reg. Lat. 1290
Image not available
Let Medusa come, then we will turn him to
stone. . . .
It was a mistake that we did not avenge Theseus
attack.
(lines 52, 54)
Though Perseus is not mentioned, we meet the
petrifying gorgon head, which is precisely the
central activating motif and the weapon in Sig-
norellis wedding scene. The Furies would like
to activate it, as Perseus had there. His action is
the classical equivalent of their wish to block the
travelers. The context is the step from the intro-
ductory part of hell to its depths. They cite The-
seus as having forced his way into Hades, the act
shown by Signorelli in a monochrome in the
Virgil set.
Earlier, when crossing the frame below Minos,
our eye passed a major stage on the way to hell
where light and color disappeared. Here is
another such stage, and though Dante did pass it,
we do not. There are no monochromes of what
comes later, the circles of hell that Nardo and
Angelico had shown in their Last Judgments.
80
Beyond the first step below Minos, the imagery
as it shifts to the figurative image with the Gor-
gon head shows a reversal from the literal text,
the Furies desire to use it for evil, to Perseuss
good use.
It is also just here, when Dante is barred at the
gate of Dis, that he suddenly addresses his readers:
O you who have sound minds,
See the teaching that is hidden
Under the veil of the strange verses.
(lines 6163)
We are urgedas in the one other case cited
from Purgatorio 9, Dantes only other such for-
mulationto read allegorically. And Signorelli
here gives allegorical images from his literal text.
This very possibly is also the context of his bring-
ing in the horse Pegasus, whose role as a symbol
of poetry, now familiar, perhaps emerges about
this time.
81
The adoption of Dante for the Last Judgment
in painting had been firmly settled long before
Signorelli. He is very new in shifting it, in the
parts beyond the entrance to hell, from literal
illustration to figurative allusion. He had done
the same in presenting the Purgatorio, which does
not belong to the Last Judgment though it had
been included in a few, each as odd and distinc-
tive as this.
Behind all this must be a devotee of the Divine
Comedy, prepared to manipulate it. The use
made of the Comedy has always been obvious,
but not this aspect with figurative images from it.
At this time the Comedy was widely available.
Manuscripts were numerous, but from the 1470s
it was printed, multiplying its accessibility a
thousandfold. The first edition printed with a
commentary was in 1481, Landinos, whose
approach became dominant, as already noted. All
editions from then to 1500, six of them, include
his notes.
82
In Orvieto in 1499 it can hardly be
questioned that this was the text employed.
Landinos opinion, hardly original, has been for-
mulated by Trinkaus: A great and true poet was
also a theologian.
83
The examples Landino pro-
vides of such poets are Virgil and Dante.
He also, as is hardly surprising, gives much
importance to the distinction between literal and
figurative meanings. The point naturally emerges
most distinctly when he comments on Inferno 9,
on the verses about the teaching under the veil.
His way of doing this is to gloss the allusion to
Theseus just preceding.
84
He extends this discus-
sion in a way that could not have been presumed
and that is of special interest here: A most subtle
allegory was written by Coluccio Salutati, a very
learned Florentine and the teacher of Leonardo
Bruni, in that, when the poets imagine Hercules,
Aeneas, Theseus, Perithoos, Amphiaraos, and
s i txor r i i i r:i x+ s + nr i xxr r n:. + + +
Orpheus to have gone down to hell, he shows
that in them were expounded various kinds of
things to be desired. He proceeds first to his
own specialty, the theory of active and contem-
plative life, but then reverts to Salutati: Our
Coluccio has it that the speculative good and the
knowledge of the truth are expressed in Homer
through Hercules and in Virgil through Aeneas.
If above it could be agreed without difficulty that
the Orvietans in 1499 were using Landino, and
also that the wainscots illustrated Dante in a figu-
rative classical way, it can hardly not be that these
readers found Landinos comment on the veiled
meaning in Dante of particular interest, and
hence that they were made aware of the admired
Salutati. Here Landino gives Salutatis book on
Hercules in a nutshell, obviating the difficulty
that its full text existed in few copies. He also
gives a clue to how Salutatis thought could sur-
vive through intermediate generations. He does
this by labeling him teacher of Leonardo
Bruni. It would seem that Salutati needed to be
identified, but not Bruni. Bruni had, to be sure,
fully realized the permeation of Florentine public
life by humanism that Landino then continued to
embody.
The figurative monochromes of the wainscot
thus refer to a Florentine background of human-
ism with a theological sense. That same local
background was seen to be the model for the
portraits of poets there; Claudian, Dante, and
Salutati had been repeatedly portrayed in Flo-
rence in civic contexts. The same humanist
background also set up Salutatis interest in
descents into hell by classical poets, recalled by
Landino. The latters world was that of Lorenzo
the Magnificent, with Bertoldo beside him
and a role for Signorelli. Everything in the wain-
scot, including its artist, seems to relate to the
same background there. What it does not tell is
how the only full realization of this strain of
Renaissance expression turned up in the Orvieto
Cathedral of all places, under a Last Judgment.
Several recent inquiries have offered names of
people in Orvieto that might explain this. That
of Bishop della Rovere seems to have no basis at
all, and to depend on the presumption that a
bishop might control things. That of Archdeacon
Alberi is only a little more likely. Alberi was
acquainted with humanists in Rome (though
there is no basis for the statement that he was a
humanist too), and he commissioned a modest
fresco cycle in the cathedral from the workshop
of Signorelli, to adorn the library he donated.
But other evidence is lacking. Alberi was not a
person of ideas, wealth, or status, as far as can be
seen.
85
Another text, never brought forward, may be
more promising. In 1494 the city fathers of Orvi-
eto sent an invitation to the Roman humanist
Pomponius Laetus to come to the city to lec-
ture.
86
This invitation brings to mind the invita-
tions by committees earlier to famous painters,
though here there is nothing to show what Laetus
would do. Laetus (who evidently did not come,
and died the next year) was certainly the most
famous humanist teacher in Rome. An archaeolo-
gist and an editor, he seems to have been a mes-
merizing lecturer to the young. Older scholarship
cited him most often regarding his love of pagan
rites. His revival of these led Pope Paul II to arrest
him for heresy. More recently the emphasis has
reasonably changed to his scholarship.
Someone with power in Orvieto wanted him,
and soon afterward someone wanted poets and
poetry, mostly classical, painted in Orvieto
Cathedral, an equally unusual event. A connec-
tion between these two analogous circumstances,
each exceptional, would seem plausible. Fortu-
nately, it is possible to name one person who
both had power in Orvieto and especially
admired Laetus, an unlikely combination. All lists
of Laetuss distinguished pupils include Alessan-
dro Farnese, the future Pope Paul III, whom we
have met as the only Orvietan among the cardi-
nals of the Borgia group. Farnese visited with the
+ + : nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
pope in 1493, and his teacher Laetus was invited
in 1494. The unlikelihood of the invitation with-
out a special stimulus lends weight to the sugges-
tion that Farnese urged the approach to his
teacher.
Farnese did not start out to become a church-
man. His parents (as his first biographer reports)
sent him in 1487, at age nineteen, to Laetuss
class.
87
Then he went to study Greek in Florence,
where the reigning authority was Poliziano,
Lorenzo the Magnificents court poet, the one
who coached Michelangelo about the myth of
the centaurs. Already in 1484 Poliziano had asked
Farnese to forward a message to Laetus.
88
A
packet of Farneses letters of 148789, our chief
source about him in those years, includes one to
Laetus.
89
Then in 1489 his Greek teacher asked
him to be godfather to his son.
90
In Florence he
had social status ranking with the Medici. Both
Lorenzo and a sister of Farnese had married into
the noble Orsini family of Rome, as Lorenzos
eldest son did also. So it is no surprise to find
Lorenzo writing in 1489 to his ambassador in
Rome to recommend Farnese for a job in the
papal administration, not an ecclesiastical post
but a diplomatic one. Lorenzo writes that Far-
neses Greek and Latin studies make him doctis-
simus, and that he is to be admired both for his
own attributes and for being from the right fam-
ily.
91
In other letters, Farnese discussed points of
Latin philology with Lorenzos son Giovanni, his
fellow student and the future Pope Leo X. Still
other letters of his praise Annius of Viterbo, who
is today recalled for classical fakes, and Paolo
Cortesi. The latter is best known today for his
later book about the proper arrangements for
cardinals. At this earlier time, in 1489, Cortesi
wrote a dialogue on learned men in which he
named Farnese as one of the interlocutors, and he
placed the scene in the Farnese family castle on
Lake Bolsena.
92
It is necessary to underline the
concerns of the young Farnese, combining
Greek and Latin studies with social rank, since he
is not easy to recognize in the later Pope Paul III
of the Council of Trent.
Not only did Farnese at this time uniquely
combine admiration for Laetus, the status to get
someone invited to Orvieto, and an official
appointment in the cathedral where the wainscot
would shortly be painted. He is also the one per-
son to emerge who could connect the Orvietans
and Signorelli. When Signorelli was invited, he
was chosen almost immediately, with little real
basis for being called famous. One other portion
of his recent career was a high point, however. At
the court of Lorenzo de Medici about 1490,
Lorenzo had two paintings of Signorellis, the
extraordinary classical Court of Pan and a
Madonna. The latter includes in a background
scene a very original classical group of musical
shepherds. These evidently refer to Virgils shep-
herd songs, or eclogues, which were believed to
have prophesized Christ in pagan literary context.
These paintings are undated, and the earliest
information on them is Vasaris report that Sig-
norelli gave them to Lorenzo.
93
This must have
been a gift to a superior according to the feu-
dal formula, obligating a reciprocal gift if the
recipient is pleased. No doubt Lorenzo was.
There is no otherwise recorded contact between
Signorelli and Florence until after Lorenzos
death in 1492. Signorelli separately had enough
status in his home town of Cortona to be named
to the city council on many occasions, and it has
been suggested that this status derived from his
known contacts with the Medici and with Flo-
rence, which controlled Cortona.
94
This view
gains an unnoted support from an earlier writers
suggestion that the occasion of Signorellis offer-
ing Lorenzo the two paintings may have been
the latters three-day visit to Cortona in 1488, an
extraordinary event for the town.
95
They have
commonly been dated to 148890 on account of
their style, as well as with reference to the date of
Lorenzos death.
96
Yet it seems implausible that
Signorelli would have been prepared at that
s i txor r i i i r:i x+ s + nr i xxr r n:. + +
moment with two paintings so distinct from his
other work. A revised version of this scenario
might be that, at the moment of the visit,
Lorenzo saw work of the towns leading artist
in itself a likely eventand invited him to his
court in Florence, with the hope of commissions.
On arrival, Signorelli would paint these uniquely
Medicean works, very likely with hints from
someone like Poliziano. In this case, the paint-
ings would have been done about 1489, just
when Farnese was also at the court. The young
scholar of Greek could not overlook the Pan
(Fig. 67), the single best token of humanism in
painting in this generation by any artist.
97
Along
with Poliziano, the other young star of the group
of Florentine philosophers was Pico della Riran-
dola. If confirmation is available for the sugges-
tion (see note 22) that his esoteric interests
included the apocryphal book of Enoch, other-
wise not known to have been read at this time,
there would be an explanation there for the
source in Enoch of the four Orvieto archangels,
and an additional link between the Orvieto proj-
ect and Neoplatonic Florence.
In 1498 the Orvietans finally gave up their
hope that Perugino would paint their chapel. We
+ + nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
ri t. o; Court of Pan. Formerly Berlin, Kaiser Friedrich Museum
Image not available
have seen them in 1499 replacing him with Sig-
norelli, with rare speed of decision. In their new
need for a painter who could be labeled famous,
a recommendation by the powerful Farnese
would unquestionably have been weighty. In
turn, a memory of the Pan by Farnese would
surely have sufficed to make him promote its
artist as a candidate in the crisis. It would not
hurt that the Pan evoked just that humanistic
imagery that was congruent with Farneses own
pleasure. In this scenario a second powerful name
should be mentioned, that of Cardinal Grimani,
whose connections both with connoisseurship
and with the Borgia group in control of Orvieto
have been observed. It would be logical to see
him seconding a proposal by Farnese.
This reconstruction also offers an explanation
for another factor that has so far escaped explana-
tionthat is, why Signorelli quickly dropped
his big project at Monte Oliveto near Siena,
with only the small inducement of the vaults in
Orvieto. That would happen naturally if the
monks at Monte Oliveto felt pressure from
church powers to release him, and separately if
Signorelli felt he could count on getting the full
commission in Orvieto. Cardinal Farnese was
one of the few people who could have managed
both arrangements. The later years of Farnese
have left one or two quite odd traces of his still
remembering Signorelli.
98
Once Signorelli went to work at Orvieto, the
novel wainscot imagery emerged quite soon.
99
What was novel was not so much the representa-
tion of the classical stories depicted, which were
not unusual at the time, but rather the link
between them and the Purgatorio.
100
In the
humanistic Florentine context of Landino, they
appear together. Farnese emerges as a candidate,
with no apparent disadvantages, to have been the
person behind this project, at least behind the
general idea of such an unusual combination. He
is also the only visible candidate for identification
as the person who worked out the details, being
the only known practiced student of classical
philology in Orvieto. Is this a reasonable specula-
tion? The report that the young cardinal was not
wealthy up to 1502 might suggest that he was not
very busy either.
101
At least any vigorous negation
of this idea might serve to stimulate a search for
another.
The frescoes of the chapels inner bay, which
are the theme of this chapter, fall into two dissim-
ilar groups. The first one, on the vault and the
large wall areas, shows the Last Judgment in a
scheme then standard, while the second, on the
wainscot, shows an unprecedented set of literary
portraits and scenes from epic poems. The chap-
ter, devoted like the rest of this book to recon-
structing for the first time the cycles stages of
production, correspondingly has two differing
parts, and both have required novel emphases. In
the relatively simple case of the wainscot, the
problem was to determine the unifying reason for
the choices of the numerous scenes, a matter that
had not been addressed. The answer seems to
emerge in Salutatis idea that we learn about the
underworld from the poets. That led to another
question: how it was possible to place this subject
in a church? Here the answer emerged in the fig-
ure of Farnese, a trained humanist who was also a
locally influential prelate.
In the more complex case of the vault and the
wall scenes, the equally novel focus was on Sig-
norellis use of Angelicos older arrangements.
After this has been explored, a different problem
seems to be generated, in the context of these
two artists almost polar unlikeness in style
Angelico being famous for gentle piety, Sig-
norelli for tough physicality. This issue is a
subjective one, because readings of style vary
greatly, so that only tentative thoughts on the
question can be offered in concluding this chap-
ter. In one view, it might be maintained that the
Renaissance was capable of disregarding individ-
s i txor r i i i r:i x+ s + nr i xxr r n:. + +
ual styles when handling a theme with a strong
tradition of presentation. One might argue that
Michelangelos Last Judgment shows something
of this kind. Alternatively, once the question has
come to the surface, one might decide that the
two artists styles are not so unlike after all, even
apart from their common adherence to basic
Renaissance criteria of realism. When we see a
precedent for Signorellis scene of the damned in
Angelicos scene of hell, and conversely how the
graceful dance in Angelicos heaven is easy to
associate with the relaxed procession of the saved
by Signorelli, we might deduce that the two
masters have more in common than had been
supposed. Such a view might also be in a context
of pointing out the periods great concern for
dramatic exposition of events, to which the
artists adjust their styles, much like skilled actors
moving from one role to another. The findings
of this chapter thus bequeath meaningful prob-
lems to future observers who may work with dif-
ferent factors of the imagery.
+ + o nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
cn:r + r r r i vr
The Imagery of the Outer Bay
p
n 1499 the Orvieto Cathedral committee in
charge of construction had been able to pro-
vide their new artist, Signorelli, with a good
deal of guidance for the inner bay, based mainly
on what Angelico had left behind. Angelicos
two triangles on the vault (which have always
been conspicuous to viewers and scholars) were
the glaring token of a work barely begun, and his
gavantone offered a schema for a Last Judgment
that made sense, being partly traditional and
partly novel. The novelties introduced were a
response in part to the special condition of the
walls and in part to quite other forces, including
the artists own notions.
The outer bay was not provided for at all.
That is explicit in the document of 1499 when
Signorelli asks to be told what is wanted for that
bay and the response is that he should continue
with the Last Judgment. This seems reasonable to
us, from the result. But there was no precedent
for what might be presented there, beyond the
one scene of the Raising of the Dead. The inner
bay already showed a complete set of the other
standard imagery, but this one required compo-
nent by not being included there quite probably
led to the more general decision to continue
with the Last Judgment imagery in this whole
outer area. Murals of Last Judgments normally
shared their rooms with other themes, as in the
case of Giotto, and it is likely that Angelico
assumed that the program here would be of that
kind, showing the Last Judgment only in the
inner bay. But that was now contraindicated.
Even though the conversation of 1499 applied
only to the vault, it would tend to affect the
whole.
The second contract, dated April 27, 1500,
provided for Signorelli to cover with figures
(storiare) all the available surfaces of vaults and
walls, as well as window embrasures and one of
the two small chapels. He is to follow the draw-
ing given by the master, though also with more
figures as he will think best, though not with
fewer than he has given in the drawing.
1
The
themes had thus been established, but not the
compositions, at least not in a way prohibiting
revisions. The artist could play with these, specif-
ically by adding figures; here one is allowed to
think the committee felt the pride in Signorellis
drawing that has been the pleasure of observers
from Vasari to the present.
An additional clause establishes that the artist is
also to cover the entrance wall with stories,
according as we will give him or will be in
agreement with him. For this area there was no
specific theme yet, which means there was no
overarching plan for the entire work. Those con-
cerned were quite ready to continue in stages, to
allow painting of some stories to start without set-
tling on the last ones. This is contrary to usual
postulates about how Renaissance mural projects
were planned, postulates that are based on less full
evidence. To be sure, it was not normal to call for
extensions of a theme that was already complete,
or nearly so, in traditional terms. The rare and
unique scenes on the walls of the outer bay, to be
explored shortly, have a brilliance and boldness in
relating design to theme that have received special
attention in each case and been recognized by all,
but the fact that the design plan actually devel-
oped in stages over a period of time has generally
been overlooked; instead, viewers have tended to
see the chapel decoration as a whole as a single
statement, designed all at once.
The outer vault, the first subunit the commit-
tee looked at, usually gets little attention, except
to link it with the inner vault, which is not in
error. The outer vaults frames had even been
painted by Angelicos assistant Master Pietro. Its
larger figures of saints are easily extrapolated from
the ones shown in earlier Last Judgments, as well
as from familiar church texts, as already discussed.
No similar easy extension prepares us for the big
wall scenes, other than the Raising of the Dead.
The scene with the raising of the dead also
appears to have had a special Orvietan interest
connected with the old fight against heresy,
which will be investigated below.
The outer bays three walls show four scenes,
the two large ones on the side walls, the Raising
of the Dead and Antichrist, opposite each other
(Figs. 27, B, and 26, A), and two small scenes
on the entrance wall (Fig. 68), on either side of
the entrance opening. Unlike the inner bay, but
like most Renaissance murals, these are narrative
scenes that have a before-and-after relationship
to each other. But the chronology does not have
a smooth relationship to the locations on the
walls. The Raising of the Dead is evidently the
latest event, immediately preceding the Judg-
ment itself. Guidebooks and the scholarship duly
encourage the viewer to reach this scene last of
the four in moving around the chapel, thus plac-
ing the Fire from Heaven next to last, since it is
adjacent to the Raising of the Dead scene, around
the corner on the entrance wall. That in turn is
preceded, in these books, by the other small
scene on the entrance wall, the Five Signs. Pre-
ceding the Five Signs, we are asked to work back
by turning the other corner to the side wall
opposite the Raising of the Dead, to find the
Antichrist story, the earliest incident of the narra-
tive; indeed, all the books start there. However,
the texts utilized by the artist begin with the Five
Signs. From that event, then, we should move to
the Antichrist, then reverse course and jump
over the Signs to the Fire scene, to reach the
Flesh scene last. Even specialized inquiries about
narrative processes of this period, surely over-
whelmed by the visual assurance of the paintings,
seem to fail to notice this.
A possible explanation for the discrepancy
time sequence misaligned with space sequence
might cite the good analogy of the Sistine
ceiling, where essentially the same thing occurs.
The space sequence in that case interchanges the
times of two events, it is usually agreed, because
the surface areas are of different sizes and one
+ + nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
ri t. o Scheme of entrance wall (after Vischer)
Image not available
event required more figures. This need was
accommodated at the expense of the sequence. If
that happened in Orvieto, where indeed the two
interchanged scenes occupy areas of very differ-
ent sizes, the solution would be simple. Yet the
opposite seems to be true. The small area given
the Five Signs is crowded, and the figures are
given reduced scale. Conversely, the Antichrist
scene is spread out and includes many secondary
incidents.
A more plausible explanation for the inter-
change at Orvieto connects it with the known
fact that the decision about the themes came in
two stages and that there were drawings for the
two big side wall scenes, only, at the time of the
contract. In this hypothesis, the subjects of the
two scenes on the side walls, the Antichrist and
the Raising of the Dead, were already settled at
the time of the contract as we see them, and
included in the drawings. When the decision was
later made about the entrance wall, the motifs
chosen turned out to include one episode earlier
and one later than the account of Antichrist, but,
in this view, that was not regarded as a problem.
The tolerance for such shifts exemplified in the
slightly later Sistine program, of 1508, as men-
tioned, would fit such a reading.
To be sure, this view requires the presumption
that the two side-wall scenes we now see are the
same as those originally assigned to those spaces.
It does not leave room for the possibility that the
set of four was more actively reworked when the
entrance scenes were decided. It could have
been, if the painting on the side walls were not
too far along, but the very fact that we now have
the irregular sequence makes it highly unlikely
that the arrangement was revised, so that again
returns us to the original hypothesis.
Attention to this matter seems warranted not
only because it adds to our ability to reconstruct
events but also because it addresses the way
scholars, as noted in the introduction, move for-
ward from the Raising of the Dead to treat even
the inner bay units as a narrative series, ending
with the Blessed at Josaphat.
The document of 1499 contains another clause
that has drawn much attention. In making the
motion to continue with themes of the Judg-
ment, which passed unanimously, the committee
member supported his case by remarking that this
would be according to (prout) what had been pre-
viously (alias) advised orally (oretenus) by the
towns esteemed theologians (venerabiles magistros
sacre pagine huius civitatis).
2
Writers in English often
give a literal translation of the words magistri sacre
pagine as masters of the sacred page, but others
cite the original phrase. This indicates that it has
not been well understood and makes it sound sig-
nificant. Sacred page is simply the Bible, given
a name with a bit of extra flourish,
3
and its mas-
ters are all those with educational qualifications
to use the Bible. Such qualifications are wide-
spread. Thus, in a fourteenth-century biography a
saint is described as triumphing in debate over
214 magistros de sacra pagina.
4
A recent spe-
cialist writes that we know that Signorelli
received advice from these masters, which is not
the case; only the committee received it. Another
finds that the advice would be what guided the
iconographic choice. Yet the advice, so far as we
know, is indicated only as a choice of the general
theme, the Last Judgment, as against something
else. The masters all opted for this choice, speak-
ing to the committee, which had the final say and
voted in favor. One might reconstruct a meeting
in which a group of masters offered this as a
group decision, but a more plausible reconstruc-
tion might be that committee members, once
again faced with such an issue, asked questions of
various such persons. There is nothing that con-
nects them with the chapel at any point after the
committee vote. Writers who have emphasized
this text have passed over the limitations signaled
in the terms alias, previously, and oretenus, orally.
+ nr i x:tr r. or + nr ou+ r r n:. + + ,
The latter evokes the reverse of any detailed plan,
suggesting instead the generality that the commit-
tee reports.
Less attention has been paid to another line in
the record, one that offers a stronger basis for
locating the source of decisions about the details
in the paintings. It is in the contract, which spec-
ifies that the work will be done either according
as we will give it to him or will come to an
agreement with him.
5
Thus, not only is there an
opportunity for the artist to make a contribution,
but the decision remains open as to whether it,
or the other option giving the committee all the
power, will prevail. It brings to mind the deci-
sion to consult Fra Angelico, which seemed so
unusual, and it also gives the artist the freedom to
add figures if he so desires.
The first theme chosen was certainly the Rais-
ing of the Dead, the only one absent from the
inner bay though required by tradition. This
scene (Fig. 69) has received less attention than
the nearby Damned and Antichrist scenes, per-
haps because of its relatively lower level of phys-
ical energy. It does, however, show many
innovations in the treatment of the theme, which
are surely connected to the uniquely large area to
which it has been assigned and probably also to
the artists option of adding figures. Among the
+ : o nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
ri t. o, Raising of the Dead (cf. Fig. 27, n)
Image not available
innovations are two symmetrical groups of three
figures each at center left and center right. The
figures are embracing and are readily perceived as
old friends from life on earth now reunited.
Nothing like this seems to have been included in
earlier images of the Raising of the Dead episode
of a Last Judgment. It is astonishing that no note
has been taken of this novelty in Signorelli. The
inspiration obviously comes from the Blessed
scene (Fig. 42), the one most like the scene of the
Raising of the Dead in every respect with regard
to composition and extent of action. It has been
noted that the greeting of friends in the Blessed
scenethere too a novelty with respect to meet-
ings of couples, such as husband and wifehad a
basis in theological writing.
6
Here it may be star-
tling that the greeting is extended to this earlier
moment before the saved and the damned have
been sorted. None of Signorellis damned greet
each other. Are we perhaps meant to take it that
among those being resurrected here, it is those
who will be saved who are meeting, and the rest
are to be damned? In any case, the image was
being addressed with some thought.
It is not only an added motif that is novel in
Signorellis Raising of the Dead. The absence of
a standard element, the tombs, is also novel. The
dead rise instead from bare earth, apparently for
the first time in any monumental Italian Last
Judgment. Tombs were conspicuous in such
obvious earlier models as the sculptures on the
Orvieto Cathedral faade (Figs. 33 and 70) and
in all of Angelicos versions. The variant with
bare earth is, however, quite compatible with
theology,
7
and before Signorelli there is one
major visual context where it is common: in the
fifteenth-century painting in Flanders and adja-
cent regions. Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Wey-
den, Memling, and Stefan Lochner all show it, as
do others. The earliest such image I have seen is
in the Limbourg brothers famous Trs Riches
Heures (1415) of the Duke of Berri (Fig. 71). This
+ nr i x:tr r. or + nr ou+ r r n:. + : +
ri t. ;o Raising of the Dead, Orvieto Cathedral faade,
bottom section (detail of Fig. 33)
ri t. ;+ Limbourg Brothers, Raising of the Dead, in Trs
Riches Heures. Chantilly, Muse Cond
Image not available
Image not available
miniature also anticipates Signorelli in showing
the Raising of the Dead as a scene separate from
the Last Judgment, a true rarity that I have
located otherwise only in two image sets from
several centuries earlier.
8
The Last Judgment is
presented in a standard way in a preceding unit.
9
If Signorelli saw a work of this type, it would
surely have attracted him, in offering a solution
to his problem of giving the Raising of the Dead
its own locus.
That he did see a solution is further supported
in that the miniature and his fresco have other
similarities. The miniature shows just two bodies
in the process of emerging from the earth, in
addition to a partial third in the background.
One of the two, in right profile, helps himself up
by leaning on his right elbow while raising and
bending his left leg. The other gazes upward
while supporting himself on the ground with one
hand, with his opposite leg bent, while his whole
body leans toward the supporting hand. All these
details recur in a grouped pair among Signorellis
most prominent figures. The second of the two
poses has interested scholars of the Limbourg
brothers because it recurs in another scene of the
Trs Riches Heures, where the figure is Adam,
and in an earlier work of theirs of 1402, with the
same identity, and because it is the best evidence
in their work of any interest in classical antiquity.
Moreover, in 1412, another Franco-Flemish Last
Judgment shows it, in the chief illustration of a
breviary.
10
This last instance is of still more inter-
est here. Beneath the Last Judgment and ten lines
of text, a separate scene in the lower margin, a
bas de page, presents hell, to which damned souls
descend, in two-thirds of its breadth, and in the
left third presents purgatory, from which one
soul rises. Perhaps the rising soul signals purga-
tory being closed down. Last Judgments of
course never show purgatory, because its role
ends when the world does, and therefore this
depiction of purgatory has been called a unique
exception. In any case, these motifs in the lower
margin are the closest analogy to Signorellis
wainscots, with figurative purgatory and hell
under a Last Judgment. A hypothesis that the res-
urrection from bare earth was inaugurated in the
Trs Riches Heures (or reinvented after much ear-
lier such images had been forgotten) may be sup-
ported in that the related 1412 scene shows
tombs, if very modest ones; they might, then, be
viewed as a transitional form.
Signorellis damned being pulled by ropes also
had a unique precedent, as discussed above, in
the Trs Riches Heures, which also involved the
most prominent foreground figures on their
page. The history of the manuscripts ownership,
however, excludes any chance that Signorelli had
seen it. Still, the varied and close analogies might
lead one to wonder whether he saw a close copy
of the manuscript, which might well have
existed.
11
This context returns us to Cardinal
Grimani, both a visitor to Orvieto and a major
collector of Flemish painting, especially manu-
scripts. One could reasonably speculate that
Grimani and his good colleague the Orvietan
cardinal Farnese talked about the largest problem
of the fresco cyclewhere to locate the Raising
of the Dead sceneand that Grimani might have
offered a solution by showing the artist a manu-
script he owned.
The literature seems not to have explored any
connections with northern painting in Orvieto,
or another major invention in the Raising of the
Dead scene: the skeletons. The skeletons seem
totally unprecedented. They appear in two
groups here, one at the right front where several
clamber up from the earth, and one farther back
at the far right, where a group seems to be enter-
ing the stage space. The groups have in common
that they are just arriving, and this associates
them with an initial moment of the Raising of
the Dead, which is consistent with the texts to be
mentioned shortly. The presence of the skeletons
+ : : nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
has been noted only in brief descriptions, perhaps
because it is assumed that the artists passion for
anatomy explains them adequately, or simply
because there is less interest in this milder scene.
Yet these figures have a larger role than any of
Signorellis other novelties here. Bynum has sur-
veyed imagery of the raising of the dead over the
centuries and says these are the earliest skeletons
to appear.
12
She cites only two other cases. One is
an engraving of 1554 that includes a long text
quoting Ezekiel 37:6, the famous prophecy that
the dry bones will be brought back to life and
gain sinews and flesh. Bynum does not cite the
skeletons in Michelangelos Last Judgment,
whose most involved patron, Pope Paul III, had
been Cardinal Farnese. Michelangelos motifs of
Charon and Minos in this scene are regularly
assigned to his awareness of Signorelli, but that
precedent is less often observed with regard to
the skeletons. In 1553 Michelangelos biographer
Condivi took note of these dead, who accord-
ing to the prophecy of Ezekiel, have only their
bones
13
(a source citation is unusual for him).
The reoccurrence of the Ezekiel verse in the
engraving of 1554 suggests that the artist believed
the motif needed such support. At the same time
it suggests that the source is sufficient, and theo-
logical exposition is not involved. This passage in
Ezekiel has always been one of the principal texts
for the Last Judgment, so the earlier absence of
skeletons is perhaps surprising.
The numerous rare motifs in this Raising of
the Dead distinguish this scene from the seg-
ments of the inner bay, where standard patterns
prevail, even if with some rather less emphatic
novelties. This difference from the previous pre-
sentations reinforces the basic novelty of giving
the scene such importance. A stimulus for that
might be the adjacent imagery just below, in the
little chapel with the bodies of the saints (Fig. 27,
M). Signorellis contract called for painting that
chapel, yet not the matching little chapel on the
opposite wall (Fig. 26, under A). The latter
clearly was not part of the Judgment complex.
The scene under the Raising of the Dead also has
a separate devotional context, and yet it seems
connected with the larger theme and its con-
cerns. The little chapel was owned by the cathe-
dral and thus under the committees jurisdiction,
while the one opposite was sold, at least later.
When painted by Master Pietro in 1468, this
little niche chapel containing the bodies of
Parenzo and Faustino became the one part of
the chapel covered with painting, apart from
Angelicos vault triangles The holy relics it
housed made it a destination for worshipers and
no doubt brought alms. Master Pietros fresco
Christ in the Mode of the Piet has an inscription
calling Parenzo and Faustino those for whose
interceding merits God chose this city. Because
these saints became the towns patrons, they
were of concern to the committee, which in the
same year, 1468, had a wooden casket made for
the bodies.
14
The contract of 1500 required Sig-
norelli to repaint the chapel, and he too shows
Faustino and Parenzo flanking the dead Christ,
but the latter is now more naturalistically lying
on the ground in front of the tomb rather than
upright inside it (Fig. 72). In a rare procedure,
possibly connected with the ongoing water
problems, a new party wall was constructed in
front of the old fresco, leaving air between. This
allowed the older fresco to survive, and be
recently rediscovered. It is not clear why a new
fresco was required. The idea that the old one
was too damaged to be salvaged is not convinc-
ing, because the Christ survives in full and
retouching in such cases is found elsewhere in
the cathedral. A desire to make the chapel look
homogeneous would match some expressions of
the period, even if Angelicos work was plainly
exempt. In the event, unity of style overcomes a
partial shift of program and recalls a frequent,
perhaps rash, assumption in writings on the
+ nr i x:tr r. or + nr ou+ r r n:. + :
chapel that unity of meaning can be assumed
throughout, with little other basis than unity of
style. It may be that the water problem was the
whole reason for this arrangement.
Signorellis design of the recumbent Christ
and two mourning women is identical, in mirror
image, to one he did for an altarpiece in Cor-
tona, finished in February 1502.
15
The general
agreement that the altarpiece is the earlier version
seems reasonable. What is not generally observed
is that the subject matter is changed. The altar-
piece (Fig. 73) has the standard theme of the
mourning at the foot of the cross, and there are
small background scenes showing previous and
later moments: the Crucifixion and the Resur-
rection. Here in the fresco the figure of Christ is
recumbent in front of the tomb, an uncanonical
and apparently unique arrangement. The one
small background scene, represented as a mono-
chrome relief sculpture on the tomb, shows the
preceding moment of carrying Christ to the
tomb, which is consistently followed, in Passion
imagery, by his being lowered into the tomb.
Signorellis modification here, from his standard
design in the altarpiece, addresses the difficulty of
the low, wide rectangle with a grace that has
allowed it to be overlooked. He is also able to
keep close to the motif of the superseded fresco
in making the body and the tomb the two foci.
The two saints also recur, but now in full
length. They also get increased emphasis by the
adding of little scenes of their martyrdoms, on
the principle of a predella. Following the legends
recorded in the Orvieto service book, Faustino is
shown thrown from a bridge into the river
Tiber, and Parenzo is killed by an Orvietan
heretic with a hammer blow (Figs. 74 and 75).
The two roundels, like all the others on the
wainscot level, are in monochrome and nicely
use the side walls of the niche. Again the design
ri t. ;: Piet with Saints Faustino and Pietro Parenzo (cf. Fig. 27 in arch marked x)
Image not available
+ nr i x:tr r. or + nr ou+ r r n:. + :
ri t. ; Piet, altarpiece, Cortona, Museo Diocesano
unity is retained during the extension of the the-
matic material.
Most Italian cities have local saints, whose
relics they often venerate, as here. Most are early
bishops, like San Brizio, but some are martyrs.
Faustino was martyred in Rome, and there is no
indication of how his body got to Orvieto. As a
much more recent martyr, Parenzo is unusual, as
evidenced by the unusually detailed account of
him in the local book.
16
If we may judge from a
Image not available
procession that accompanied the provision of the
new casket in 1468, his cult was growing in the
late fifteenth century.
17
In Signorellis fresco, as in the earlier one, the
two honored saints have only a secondary role,
flanking the Christ. It is normal for such saints to
yield in this way in altarpieces, but almost always
it is the Virgin Mary to whom they yield. The
rare choice of the dead Christ certainly points to
the special importance here of the Feast of Cor-
pus Christi, in the chapel opposite and in the
town generally. The attention to the body of
Christ here certainly relates to the awareness that
Parenzo was martyred by the heretics who
denied the incarnation of Christ. Parenzos mis-
sion from the pope to suppress the heretics of
Orvieto was recorded earlier. That this concern
should remain alive centuries after the
Manicheans had faded away is remarkable, yet it
did, as Raphaels fresco of the Miracle of Bolsena
clearly shows (Fig. 76).
Raphaels fresco, ordered by Pope Julius II
(150912), is one of a set of four filling the walls
of a reception room in the Vatican. The other
three show Saint Peter, the first pope, freed from
prison by an angel, the invader Heliodorus
expelled from the Temple in Jerusalem, and
Attilas invasion of Rome repulsed. All three have
analogous casts of characters: each time evil mili-
tary personnel (including Peters prison guards)
have attacked the pope, or his Old Testament
analogue, the high priest in the temple of
Jerusalem, but are then defeated by angels or air-
borne saints. These persons, presenting one
recurrent theme, account for all those in all three
frescoes who have identities with names, with
the notable exception of the figure of Julius II as
witness in the Heliodorus scene. However, the
Bolsena scene does not match. Its presence
requires anyone who wants to assign a single
label to the four frescoes to use generic terms,
like divine aid to the church. Why is this scene
+ : o nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
ri t. ; Martyrdom of Saint Faustino (cf. Fig. 27, on left
wall in arch marked x)
ri t. ; Martyrdom of Saint Pietro Parenzo (cf. Fig. 27,
on right wall in arch marked x)
included here? To be sure, the Bolsena scene
does show both soldiers and a priest at an altar,
like the high priest of Jerusalem. But their moral
standing is the opposite of the other three: the
priest is evil, in his doubt about the truth of the
Mass, and soldiers are good, supporting the pope.
(The soldiers in the scene are usually considered
merely decorative accessories.) The scene also
features a prayerful, observing pope, similar to
the one in the Heliodorus scene. In this way, the
Bolsena scene is complementary to the other
three, focusing not on the alarming attack and its
supernatural defeat but on the happy resolution
of a threat by bad clergy. The church establish-
ment and its troops handle it. This formulation,
which seems not to have been addressed, calls for
further inquiry. So far, it indicates the special role
of the Bolsena scene and its reference. A divine
miracle had defeated the heresy about the Body
and Blood. It is always noted that Pope Julius vis-
ited Orvieto in 1506 and paid homage to the
cloth flecked with the blood of Christ, just as
Raphael shows it.
18
The Manicheans, as the Orthodox named these
heretics (or Cathari, in their own terms) had fallen
from their peak two hundred years before 1500,
but why their views still troubled the orthodox is
less puzzling if one focuses on variant names rang-
ing from Manichean, the generic term for
dualist over a thousand years, to Waldensian,
+ nr i x:tr r. or + nr ou+ r r n:. + : ;
ri t. ;o Raphael, Mass of Bolsena, fresco. Vatican, Stanza dEliodoro
Image not available
the name of one of the surviving sects that shared
some if not all their views. In 1367 the inquisition
still condemned a Cathar in Piedmont who was
in contact with a group in Bosnia and in 1412 had
burned the remains of a man who had traveled
there to adopt the faith of the heretics. In the
1440s Pope Nicholas V accused the royal court of
Bosnia of being Manichean, and in 1462 three
Bosnian nobles were sent to Rome to renounce
their Manichean errors. They had to abjure the
principle of two gods, supremely good and evil.
19
Pope Pius II, whose visit to Orvieto has been
noted, wrote a geography of Europe around 1460
in which he described the Bosnian heretics as
Manichean dualists. In 1487 Pope Innocent VIII
issued a bull to suppress the Waldensians. In 1512
in Paris, Alfonso Rizzi, a Dominican from Naples
who was the royal confessor, published a book
called Eruditiones to refute the Waldensian denial
of the existence of purgatory. It is thus less surpris-
ing that in Orvieto the tradition of this argument
was still alive in 1700, when in the earliest descrip-
tion of Signorellis frescoes the killers of Parenzo
were described as Manichean.
20
If the Miracle of Bolsena had refuted
Manichean views on Christs bodily existence,
the orthodox doctrine of the Last Judgment
refuted the same heretics denial of the resurrec-
tion of the dead. Any image of that resurrection
in a Last Judgment would assert that refutation,
but Signorellis introduction of the skeletons
does so more emphatically. After the skeletons
appear entering the scene, other dead, who have
taken on flesh, are shown, as in Ezekiel. Sig-
norelli had to paint this scene on one of four
available surfaces on the walls of the outer bay,
and it seems not a coincidence that he chose the
bay just above Parenzos tomb.
The question should be raised whether other
aspects of the chapels imagery refer to the refuta-
tion of the Manicheans. They rejected the idea of
purgatory, which here makes an almost unique
appearance in a Last Judgment. However, the
limitation in the chapel to the preface to Purga-
tory, at least with respect to literal images, makes
such a correlation doubtful. To be sure, any Last
Judgment is, as such, in opposition to their
heresy. Yet this one in general relates closely
enough to standard Judgments far from Orvieto
that the idea of such an intention has little sup-
port. Perhaps it was present without needing to
offer extra insistence.
A somewhat stronger case may be made that
such refutation of heresy was a factor using the
tomb of Pope Paul II. The Last Judgment in its
top section was mentioned earlier as the first on a
tomb and as the most ambitious representation of
the theme in the generation just preceding Sig-
norelli (Fig. 34). Signorelli certainly knew the
work, which had recently been conspicuously
installed in Saint Peters in Rome. The upper part
is standard, but the separation of the sheep and
goats, below, has some unusual details. It is prob-
ably not surprising that the pope is among the
blessed, far at the side, kneeling in the donor
pose. The damned are pulled toward hellfire by a
devil with a rope; the devil shows three faces,
perhaps to be identified as Dantes three Furies at
the gate of Dis. Three damned souls are shown
individually. One is a woman, who is perhaps a
token of the lustful, as at Orvieto. The most
emphasized, a man in the foreground, has a
sword and a book, unique attributes for a
damned soul and most famous as the attributes of
Saint Paul, who is here seen holding them in the
upper area of the sculpture near Christ. This
damned soul is in a position symmetrical with
that of Pope Paul, so that he seems to be
intended as a kind of counter-Paul. The only
damned souls who normally hold books are
heretics, or other falsifiers of the word,
21
and that
reference seems certain here from the inscription
on the tomb. It praises the pope, among other
things, for repressing heretics,
22
which is surpris-
ing because heretics were rare at the time. That a
heretic should also have a sword could be sup-
ported by citing Dante, who describes the arch-
heretics Arius and Sabellius as like swords to the
scriptures (Paradiso 13.127). The tomb inscrip-
tion does not specify what heretics Paul repressed
with arms. It is unlikely that it refers to his
imprisonment of Pomponius Laetus, the human-
ist, but it might refer to his campaign against the
king of Bohemia. In any case, the tomb provides
the Orvieto project with a model for infusing
heresy into a Last Judgment image.
23
Apart from the scene of the Raising of the
Dead, Signorelli found a simple way to meet the
patrons requirement that he cover the outer bay
walls with themes not outside the matter of the
Judgment. A base was readily available in writ-
ings of the time for extending the theme to
related topics. Obviously, such additional mat-
ter would precede the Judgment, since nothing
at all is simultaneous or later. Among texts
addressing this theme, one may first cite a pam-
phlet printed about 1496 in Italy in at least two
editions. Its title, very long as is common for the
era, advertises: These are the authorities of the
holy doctors of the advent of Christ in the Judg-
ment, with the horrible preamble and evil of this
most evil man Antichrist. In fact, the pamphlet
is mainly about the life of the Antichrist, which is
presented in twenty-two woodcuts, followed by
only one of the Last Judgment.
24
As a result, the
pamphlet is usually cited in the abbreviated form
Antichrist, although this has led to some less
desirable inferences. All the more remarkable is
that the pamphlets title actually describes its
contents as being about the Judgment, with the
portion about Antichrist being only its horrible
preamble. Perhaps there was a desire to validate
the portion of the text that actually was about
what preceded the Judgment.
The same topic, about the Antichrist as preface
to the Judgment, appears in religious drama of
the period. Some half-dozen manuscripts of such
plays survive. The only Italian one, from Perugia,
believed to have been written about 132030 but
apparently performed later as well, is also com-
monly called the Antichrist play. However, in
this case the emphasis is reversed. Antichrist only
gets the introductory lines 196, and the remain-
der, in lines 97432, actually does describe the
Last Judgment.
25
The portion titled Antichrist,
here indeed only a preamble, appears not with
the full biography in the pamphlet but in just two
incidents: the murder of the two witnesses who
righteously opposed him, Enoch and Elijah (lines
3766), and Saint Michaels killing of Antichrist
in revenge (lines 6796).
These choices match exactly what is in a fresco
of about 1330 in Ravenna, surviving only in pho-
tographs (Fig. 77).
26
It shows the central segment
of a standard Last Judgments top half but omits
the rows of assistant judges. Where the judges had
been, we see the same two incidents about
Antichrist: the murder of Enoch and Elijah, and
Saint Michael killing the Antichrist. The frescos
iconography has been called unique, but that is
true only with respect to visual works. McGinn
has offered an attractive explanation of the choice
of only these two scenes.
27
They depict those
events in the life of Antichrist that make him a
false analogue of Christ specifically in his role as
judge. In the first scene, Antichrist is seated and
condemns the witnesses, Enoch and Elijah; his
false judging is then punished in the second scene,
with Saint Michael. As in the play, the Antichrist
here is a secondary attachment to the main Last
Judgment, exactly its horrible preamble.
The same pattern is spectacularly the case in
the first chapter of the Golden Legend, on Advent.
The term advent here means the Second
Coming, which is the context of the Judgment.
Unlike the pamphlets and the drama, this work
had an extraordinarily wide circulation, first in
manuscript form for almost two centuries, then
+ nr i x:tr r. or + nr ou+ r r n:. + : ,
after it was first printed in 1473. Up to the year
1500 it had at least 123 additional printings, four
every year for twenty-eight years. These
included the usual Latin editions, and translations
into six other languages, which may be unique
for the time. Eight of these printings were in Ital-
ian, and nine Latin printings appeared in Italy,
making it highly accessible there.
28
It would
hardly have been unknown to the Orvieto clergy
and laymen there concerned with such questions
in 1500.
A substantial portion of its first chapter deals
with things that go before the day of judg-
ment. There are three such things, and they
coincide with the three scenes of Signorellis
outer bay walls other than the Raising of the
Dead. The story of Antichrist is the second (Fig.
78). Signorelli illustrates that story in episodic
fashion, much as with the motifs in the cantos of
the Purgatorio; open spaces separate clusters of fig-
ures. The order of the Golden Legend text makes
them easy to follow. The author explains that
Antichrist tries to deceive people in four ways:
by expounding scripture falsely, performing mir-
acles, offering gifts, and torturing people. In the
fresco Antichrist appears front and center orating
to a large crowd. Farther back in the center he
brings a corpse back to life, the most standard
kind of miracle. At center left, money is handed
out to his listeners, and at the far left people are
killed. The choice of these four activities to char-
acterize Antichrist has a long history, which is
already present in a theological handbook of
1265.
29
Conversely, the handbook contains noth-
ing about the Antichrists life as depicted in the
twenty-two woodcuts in the pamphlet.
At the right, Antichrists listeners overlap with
another group of people who react differently;
the group is probably to be regarded as marking a
separate episode. Clerics are debating before a lay
ri t. ;; Anonymous Riminese, fourteenth century, Last Judgment, fresco. Ravenna, Santa Maria in Porto
Image not available
audience, presumably about the meaning of these
events. (The people killed by the Antichrist also
include clerics quite prominently.) This scene
extrapolates beyond the Golden Legend text but
arguably is validated by a biblical text about the
end of the world, which will be cited in connec-
tion with the entrance wall.
Quite separate in space from these people, and
farther back, is a grand building, which is always
understood as the Temple of Jerusalem, being
invaded by soldiers. The Antichrist biography, as
in the 1496 pamphlet, has him entering the tem-
ple and being enthroned there, but that we do
not see. The Golden Legend also reports this inci-
dent, but only in the form of a quotation of a
standard commentary on the prophet Daniel.
Signorellis soldiers invading the temple evi-
dently derive from Daniels own text. The
Golden Legend quotes that prophets report that
Antichrist will bring abomination and desola-
tion to the temple. Daniels next line makes this
visual, telling us that arms shall stand on his part,
and they shall defile the sanctuary. Mark and
Luke quote Daniels abomination and desola-
tion, and Mark (13:14) links it to the end of
world.
The fresco, then, shows all four of Antichrists
actions seen in the Golden Legend, front and cen-
ter, and adds, to the rear or at the side, two
extensions. They are this one based on Daniel,
+ nr i x:tr r. or + nr ou+ r r n:. + +
ri t. ; Deeds of Antichrist (cf. Fig. 26, :)
Image not available
who is quoted in the Legend, and the one with
the debating clerics, whose links to the worlds
end will be explored below. The fresco shows
just two more stories, ones not found or even
implied in the Legend. The first shows Antichrist
condemning the witnesses Enoch and Elijah to
death, just in front of the temple and to the right.
The other, at the left, shows the Archangel
Michael destroying Antichrist, who falls to the
earth in flames. That is, he presents precisely the
same two incidents seen in the Ravenna fresco
and in the Perugia play of the Last Judgment, as
their sole annexes, or preambles, to the Last
Judgment theme.
30
Thus everything in the fresco
of Antichrist appears in such annexes to the Last
Judgment, either in these central Italian sources
or in the Golden Legends chapter on Advent.
They were all very accessible in the culture as
such annexes. This matches the committees
desire that everything here should still pertain to
the matter of the Judgment. Nothing depends on
the autonomous story of Antichrist as found in
his biography.
31
This requires emphasis, because recent studies
have argued that the Antichrist fresco is the cen-
tral one of the cycle, and then that it evokes not
only the Last Judgment but also the Apocalypse.
A reviewer, if dubious about the first claim, is
persuaded that apocalyptic visions were promi-
nent in Orvieto at the time.
32
However, the
fresco cycle contains nothing apocalyptic at all, in
the basic sense of material found in the Book of
the Apocalypse. That biblical book was very
familiar, not least from Drers woodcut cycle of
1498, whose imagery has no analogy with Sig-
norellis. None indeed has been claimed. The
idea is evidently based in part on our generalized
use of the term apocalypse to allude to violent
destructive events that overturn ordinary living.
The only comparable concerns reported at the
time from Orvieto are excited reactions to
remarkable weather and the like, which were
believed to foretell events a few years ahead, not
the end of the world. This was part of a common
syndrome, as with comets thought to foretell the
death of kings.
33
To link this to Antichrist and the
Apocalypse is dubious, and such events were not
the chief concern of Orvietans. A better candi-
date for that role would be the Borgia takeover of
their town and its finances.
Some details in the organization of the
Antichrist fresco suggest that Signorelli was cop-
ing with problems that were not present in the
inner bay and that perhaps affected the novelty of
the image. Specifically, it is the only scene with-
out a thick painted cornice at the top, and it has
been plausibly argued that this omission has to do
with the unique presence of elaborate figuration
near the top of the scene, the temple.
34
It has also
been noted, further, that because Signorelli was at
pains to reinforce a unified look in the chapel,
especially through the painted frames, this scene
must belong to a late phase of the work, close to
1503; otherwise he could have supported unity by
treating other cornices in a similar way thereafter.
Signorelli prepared the temple technically in a
way different from the figures, here and else-
where (with an exception to be noted in note
47). While the contours of the latter, when
drawn in his preparatory cartoons, were set with
quick, slashing lines that penetrate the plaster,
those of the temple show dotted lines from a
painstakingly pounced cartoon. This is consistent
with the proposal that in executing this unusual
motif he turned for help to the works of other
artists, most likely Bramante.
35
This in turn is in
accord with the unusual number of borrowings
in this scene from still other sources not seen
before. The instance most often noticed is the
central group of a devil whispering in Antichrists
ear, recycled from a woodcut in the famous
Nrnberg chronicle of 1493 (Fig. 79).
36
It is strik-
ing that Signorelli ignored the numerous other
motifs in this woodcut presenting Antichrist,
some of which showed events he included.
These include Antichrists audience, seated in the
woodcut, and demons pulling Antichrist down
from heaven. Signorelli also ignored, no longer
to our surprise, the biographical aspect of the
woodcut, the preaching of the two witnesses
against Antichrist.
Signorellis whole design suggests why the
central whispering motif may have pleased him
especially. The entire fresco, it was argued, dif-
fers from the rest of the narratives in the cycle in
being episodic. The central group of the two
close heads pulls it together at the center like a
knot. It also does so in a narrative sense, evoking
an origin for Antichrists schemes in the devils
words. It has always had impact, recently evoked
in the use of the detail on the dustjackets of
books.
The small background episode of Antichrist
bringing a corpse back to life also involves a bor-
rowing, from quite a different source that seems
not to have been observed. Antichrist processes
to the left, at the head of a clutch of followers in
profile. The group meets another one of mourn-
ers arriving from the left. In their midst, a man
on a litter sits up with thankful prayers, having
just been resuscitated by Antichrist. The whole
package is copied from the Resurrection of Drusiana
by John the Evangelist, a large fresco by Filippino
Lippi, of 1502, in Santa Maria Novella in Flo-
rence (Fig. 80). There too the bearded healer,
heading a crowd, lifts his hand in benediction,
and the dead person on the litter responds in the
same way.
37
Signorelli, it will be suggested, was
in personal contact with Filippino and need not
have gone to Florence in 1502 to see the fresco.
He could have been shown drawings. To be
sure, the preliminary drawings of Filippinos
composition that survive show schemes unlike
the final one in the fresco, with the litter moving
the other way, or on a diagonal.
38
Thus, what
Signorelli saw was something closer to the deci-
sive final form that we have in the painting, some
version from in or near 1502.
A smaller motif in the Antichrist fresco
exploits another work by Filippino. This is the
head of one of the men listening to Antichrists
speech in the foreground. We see a profile with a
sharp nose, with a distinctive hat, presented as
that of a modern citizen, unlike other nearby lis-
teners in their generic classical robes. He is regu-
larly said to be Dante, not taking into account
Dantes presence elsewhere in the chapel.
Instead, he had appeared exactly as a main figure
in Filippinos fresco of Saint Peter disputing with
+ nr i x:tr r. or + nr ou+ r r n:. +
ri t. ;, Wohlgemuth, Deeds of Antichrist, woodcut, in
Liber Chronicarum by H. Schedel. 1493.
Image not available
Simon Magus, in the Brancacci Chapel in the
Carmine in Florence (Fig. 81). He is the protag-
onist Simon Magus himself, whom Signorelli
copies down to the details of down-drawn lips
and ear flaps. The one notable change is in the
color of the headband, from green to the same
red as the rest of the hat, perhaps due to the use
of a drawing.
Simon Magus is certainly a most suitable lis-
tener to Antichrist. Augustine, writing on heresy,
said that Simon too claimed to be Christ.
39
His
most famous act was to fall from heaven when his
evil power failed, as we see Antichrist doing in
Signorellis fresco (Fig. 78). He too, again
according to Augustine, denied the resurrection
of the body, making him a forerunner of the
Cathari. A medieval tradition identifies heretics
as Antichrists.
40
Yet the most conspicuous separate episode in
this fresco is external to the Antichrist theme. It
is the group of two men at the left, one a
Dominican, the other in modern dress, unlike
the historical costumes of the people in the
Antichrist episodes. This formula of modern,
standing men at the side, as observers of a histor-
ical narrative, is first worked out systematically
ri t. o Filippino Lippi, Resurrection of Drusiana, fresco. Florence, Santa Maria Novella
Image not available
about 1480 in Rome, in the fresco cycle of the
Sistine Chapel walls, in which Signorelli had a
part. The two men here have usually been iden-
tified since the eighteenth century as a self-por-
trait of Signorelli with Angelico, the only
Dominican known to have been involved in the
project. The identification as Signorelli relies
mainly on the appearance of the same person as
one of two portrayed on a tile, still in Orvieto
(Fig. 82). An inscription on the back identifies its
subjects as Signorelli and one Nicola Franci,
there called the chamberlain at the date of the
chapel frescos. The latter identification is quite
possibly wrong, because the name given is not
correct for the chamberlain at that time.
41
At one
time the tile was called a nineteenth-century
fake, but this idea, offered by Roberto Longhi,
has since been disproved by the finding of earlier
mentions of it in archives. The work is now gen-
erally accepted as by Signorelli and as a self-por-
trait, in relation both to the inscription and to the
similar portrait in the Antichrist fresco.
This view is sometimes rejected, but on weak
grounds. Another image, the woodcut that
Vasari prefaced to the biography of Signorelli in
his Lives in 1568, has been offered as a better can-
didate to show him. But that overlooks the fact
that the woodcut copies Signorellis portrait of
another man, Vitelozzo Vitelli. In any case, the
claimed identities of the Vasari woodcuts are
notoriously unreliable. And it is not the case, as
claimed, that narrative fresco cycles do not
include portraits of artists in this era. Notable
such portraits in or linked to Umbria are by Pin-
turicchio (at Spello), Perugino (Collegio del
Cambio, Perugia), and, in 1508, by Raphael
(School of Athens). Raphael there stands beside
Sodoma, the artist who had begun the frescoes
he finished, a suggestive analogy to the Orvieto
pair. Furthermore, the proposal that the Domini-
can in the Orvieto fresco might be one of the
Orvieto theologians from whom Signorelli
received advice exaggerates their role, which
did not include advice to the artist, so far as any
evidence goes. It also extrapolates again by pro-
moting one of that group to a special status.
More notable is that these doubts have over-
looked the established tradition of artists self-
portraits specifically in Last Judgments, from the
time of Giotto and earlier. We seem to have here
an image in that tradition, seen earlier in Orvieto
on the faade and of course later in Michelan-
gelo.
42
This tradition suggests further that
Angelicos project here would probably have
called for his self-portrait. That nicely fits the
existence of a portrait probably of him made in
Orvietothe drawing by his crew chief
ri t. + Filippino Lippi, Simon Magus (detail from Dis-
pute of Simon and Saint Peter). Florence, Santa Maria del
Carmine, Brancacci Chapel
Image not available
Benozzo Gozzoli (Fig. 29)and would explain
its raison dtre. The inclusion of an Angelico
self-portrait in the gavantone would have moved
Signorelli to follow suit. He would have been
inspired to group Angelico with himself by the
precedent of Maitani with his associates in the
faade sculpture.
43
The tile showing Signorelli
and a young man would belong to this tradition,
if as suggested (see note 41) the latter is an associ-
ate of Signorellis on the project. We know that
Raphael came to Orvieto and studied the fres-
coes, making a drawing after a figure of Sig-
norellis on the entrance wall.
44
His adoption of
the formula of a self-portrait with an associate,
specifically his predecessor in the fresco cycle
including the School of Athens, would thus be
natural.
The earlier self-portraits in Last Judgments,
such as Maitanis, understandably place the artist
among the blessed.
45
Maitani and his associates
are modestly at the extreme edge of that group,
near the frame to our left. If Angelico planned a
self-portrait in the chapel, it would certainly have
followed that model and have been visible in that
location on the gavantone to Signorelli. However,
Signorellis scene of the Blessed alters precedent,
with respect to Angelicos, by making the blessed
nudes. The self-portrait, of course wearing mod-
ern clothes, could hardly stay among them. The
proposal here is that Signorelli moved it to the
minimum extent possible, to the same left edge
position in the nearest adjacent fresco, still on the
Blessed wall. That would be the Antichrist scene,
and give the result that in fact we have.
Twelve years after working in Orvieto as
Angelicos crew chief, Benozzo Gozzoli in 1459
produced his most imposing work: the fresco
cycle in the Medici Chapel in Florence. It
ri t. : Self-Portrait of
Signorelli with an Associate.
Orvieto, Museo dellOpera
del Duomo
Image not available
includes a self-portrait as a figure in the crowd,
near the left edge of a large scene. This location
became a formula for self-portraits, and Benozzos
is regularly shown as the earliest.
46
This seems to
conflict with his traditional reputation as a not
very original artist (a view, to be sure, also chal-
lenged). It would be more simply explained if it,
like others of his motifs mentioned, again reflects
the example he learned from Angelico.
47
Of the four large scenes on the walls of the
outer bay, three were novel, all except the Rais-
ing of the Dead. They all involved tremendous
requirements of invention to show this horrible
preamble of the Judgment. The Antichrist scene
on the side wall is twice the size of the other two
new ones, both on the entrance wall. It therefore
called for the most effort, which, I suggest, is
reflected in its frequent recourse to ideas from
other artists, more fully incorporated here than in
any other part of the work. The smaller scenes
on the end wall seem to have been approached
with more confidence; they show Signorelli
reverting to the brilliant tokens of bodily force he
had developed for the Damned.
These two scenes, the Five Signs and the Fire
from Heaven (Fig. 83), are absent from the Peru-
gia play and other sources. They seem to appear
only in the Golden Legend, among accessible
+ nr i x:tr r. or + nr ou+ r r n:. + ;
ri t. Five Signs of the End of the World and the Fire from Heaven, entrance wall (Fig. 68, :, n)
Image not available
accounts of the preamble, and there they form a
set with the Antichrist episodes. The fame and
wide circulation of this text seem to make it cer-
tain that it is the source here. Even someone hav-
ing in mind another source for the three stories
(which has not emerged) would have this text in
mind too. Some writers have found the psycho-
logical tone of the Antichrist fresco to be very
different from the text. That could be debated,
but does not rule out that text as the basis for the
narrative.
The first thing, preceding the Antichrist
story, concerns the Five Signs of the end of the
world (Fig. 84). (The third, following Antichrist,
is the Fire scene.) The author of the Legend cred-
its the Gospel of Luke and the Apocalypse (The
Revelation to John) as his sources. The first three
of the Signs appear in both texts. In the fourth
and fifth, where they diverge, Signorelli uses
these from Luke. (It will be recalled that in 1499
Fra Bartolommeo was instructed to make this
passage in Luke the base for his Last Judgment
fresco.) The first three signsthe black sun, the
bloody moon, and the falling starsduly appear
here in the sky, on the observers right. The
fourth and fifth signs in the Apocalypse are the
ri t. Five Signs of the End of the
World (detail of Fig. 83)
Image not available
heavens rolling away like a scroll (seen in
Giottos Last Judgment) and moving islands.
48
Lukes fourth and fifth signs are the pressing of
the lands and the sea rising over the mountains.
Signorelli deals elegantly with the impossible cue
that asks to show mountains visible under water,
by putting boats on top of mountains, forcing us
to infer that the sea had been there earlier. A sim-
ilar formula, which the artist may have noticed,
had been used in scenes of the end of Noahs
flood, leaving the ark on a mountain. The Legend
explicates the difficult phrase about pressing to
mean that the lands underwent greatest tribula-
tions. One may take these to be the tribulations
that Luke had described just before in the same
chapter, where people are told to flee and are led
away as captives, while no stone is left on
another. These are precisely the motifs Signorelli
shows us, with people running from a ruined
colonnade, a nearby building showing cracks,
and soldiers tying people up.
At the end of this chapter Luke shifts to
address the reader, saying: When these things
begin to pass, look up. Signorelli duly adds,
under the images of the five signs, a cluster of
larger figures whose only role is looking up at
them. His pleased use of this text seems not to
have been noted. An old man in a turban who is
accompanied by two other graybeards points
upward, while three soldiers in response turn
their eyes up. Besides three more figures in the
background, shown only as heads or parts of
heads, there is one more in the foreground who
responds to these circumstances by pointing to a
text in an open book. This figure is commonly
called a sibyl but is identified as male by the cos-
tume (not to mention the lack of any relevant
sibyls in this context).
49
The oddest part of his
attire is the trousers, given emphasis even though
they show only a short way up from his left
ankle, under a robe. His sandals, with many
thongs, are equally odd. Both appear worn also
by figures in Filippino Lippis Resurrection of Dru-
siana (Fig. 80), the fresco discussed just above as a
model for an episode in the Antichrist fresco.
The sandals are worn by the litter-bearers. These
men do not wear robes, and hence show more
leg, with more cords around the trouser legs,
producing an overall look somewhat different
from Signorellis figure. Filippino had used these
costume motifs before, in his fresco cycle at Santa
Maria Minerva sopra Minerva in Rome, of the
life of Thomas Aquinas (Fig. 85). They are
shown worn by one of the heretics over whom
Aquinas triumphs, identified by inscription as
Apollonarius. In her monograph on this cycle of
frescoes, Geiger has rightly cited the source of
the costume as the ancient statues of barbarians
on the arch of Constantine in Rome, thus further
reinforcing the male identity.
50
The captive bar-
barians are a natural basis for Filippinos litter-
bearers in Florence, laborers in a classical age, but
the heretic in his Rome fresco is the closer model
for Signorellis figure with the book. Filippinos
heretic, like the others grouped with him as
Aquinass defeated opponents, has tossed his
book to the ground. Both the trousered men
with books, Filippinos and Signorellis, stand as
if they would move to the right, with left arm
bent and right arm forward, while their heads
swivel the opposite way. Remarkably, the like-
ness in the two cases extends to a second person
at the left with whom the trousered one is con-
versing, and in both cases the representation is
limited to a bit of profile head cut off by the
frame. The copying is clear. Filippinos heretic,
Apollinarius, was a fourth-century figure who
denied Christs human nature, like the
Manicheans whom Aquinas refuted. How Sig-
norelli was led to all these motifs of Filippinos
will be explored shortly.
This group of Signorelli figures, checking a
book and looking up at the five signs, relates as a
whole to an episode in the Antichrist scene
+ nr i x:tr r. or + nr ou+ r r n:. + ,
around the corner (Fig. 78). There we also saw
commentators, as a separate group, checking
books and pointing up. The two groups in the
two frescoes also share, exceptionally in both
cases, the factor of not being textually based in
the narrative to which the fresco is dedicated, the
Five Signs or the Deeds of Antichrist. They are
the only such groupings, aside from the portraits
of Signorelli and Angelico. It is as if the theolo-
gians who explicate the event are being given
their own presence. In the case of the Five Signs,
they have an indirect textual basis in the phrase
where Luke tells us to look up. The group in the
Antichrist lacks even that. It can, then, be pro-
posed as being generated by the other one
around the corner. The further inference is that,
as already proposed for other reasons, the
Antichrist scene was planned later.
The Fire scene follows the Deeds of the
Antichrist in the text of the Golden Legend, as the
last of the three events before the Judgment. It is
given very brief treatment there. The one detail
evoking a visual effect is a reference to its height,
recalling the look up of the other scene. Sig-
norelli makes much of this height, with the fiery
red streaks coming from the very top in the sky,
sent down by demons. The fire burns three
groups of people below, who bend like hoops
and collapse (Fig. 86). These details can be con-
sidered pictorial inventions filling out the slight
ri t. Filippino Lippi, Saint Thomas Confuting Heretics, fresco. Rome, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva
Image not available
text. They are certainly meant to be associated
with the fall of Antichrist. He too is attacked by
lines of force from above, which destroy both
him and his followers on the ground. In both
cases they collapse in foreshortening, a technical
painters trick of well-established effectiveness in
evoking the shock of destruction. It may be that
the linking of the two scenes of destruction is
meant to bring to mind the chronological con-
tinuum between the Antichrist scene and the
Fire scene, separated here on the chapel walls by
the Five Signs anterior to both. It is similar to a
device near the group of Minos at the other end
of the chapel, with tortured sinners above and
below the molding. There too narrative continu-
ity was given weight in that way.
It should be asked why the two narrow scenes
of the Fire and the Five Signs are placed where
they are, in view of this suggestion that they
were not wholly plausible in their positions. A
look at the givens facing Signorelli when he
began may offer a clue. As we face the entrance
door (Fig. 83), the wall segment at our right is 20
percent wider than the one at the left, measured
at the top of the arch, a factor that seems not to
have been discussed. The narrower wall seems to
be a good match for the Fire scene, with its sin-
gle vertical thrust. Every other element of the
chapel walls involves upper and lower figure
groups, with airy space between. The force of
the upper group here on the lower one is contin-
uous and insistent, with fire streaks much fiercer
than the thin ones in the Antichrist scene. Simul-
taneously, the narrow wall squeezes the forms
from both sides, pushing them out at us like paste
from a tube. The fact that observers do not
notice the different widths of the wall segments is
a tribute to the skill of the painter, who once
again is seen working to impose a regular order
in his design patterns on the less regular givens.
The same proves to be the case in the wain-
scot, which, as in the inner bay, is filled with
squirming grotesques with allusions to classical
myths (Figs. 87 and 90; see also Fig. 56). Again
the units on the side walls are occupied by square
portraits in the centers and surrounded by circu-
lar scenes in monochrome. Yet the specifics have
changed, in ways that are generally discounted.
The result has been unfortunate: an unexamined
presumption that the iconographic puzzles in the
scenes can be solved by treating them as showing
the same themes that are in the wainscot of the
inner bay.
To be sure, some of the changes in the outer
bay are the result of the architectural require-
ments. Each of the two portraits on the side walls
in the outer bay is surrounded by only three
ri t. o Fire from Heaven, entrance wall, left half (cf.
Fig. 68, :)
Image not available
monochromes rather than four. The place of the
fourth, as well as of an entire additional set of
portraits-with-monochromes, is taken by the
two niches in the walls, the openings to the little
chapels. At the tops of these arched openings Sig-
norelli painted keystones, each with a mono-
chrome figure. Again this is different from the
inner bay and is generated by the niches, though
not required by them. As Angelico had in the
rich frames of the vaults, here Signorelli created
decorative motifs that work with the specifics
of the building. The keystone over the chapel of
the martyrs shows a nude Judith with the head
of Holofernes. The opposite figure is lost.
Other differences from the inner wainscot,
however, seem not to be explained by such con-
ditions. On the entrance wall, the surviving por-
trait uniquely has a circular frame and has no
narratives around it.
51
It will be suggested that the
portrait belongs not to the series of writers at all,
but to a set of heads, also in round frames, on the
opposite, altar wall: the four archangels. On the
side walls, the two portraits lack the laurel
wreaths that emphatically define poets in the
inner wainscot, yet they have consistently been
identified as also poets. That seems contraindi-
cated, because one of the two here signals his
identity by an oak wreath, and the other has
nothing on his bald head. All the monochrome
scenes surrounding these two portraits of the
outer bay show nude figures only, which must be
a conscious difference from the inner bay; in the
inner bay, nudity generally pertained only to
souls in hell or purgatory, who shared scenes
with clothed figures, or, once, to a scene of com-
bat. In the outer bay here, two circular scenes
and a third half-circle show combat, which may
have generated this approach, but now the
nudity is extended to the remaining two scenes
that do not show any combat at all.
It may almost be considered another difference
from the inner bay that the proposals to name the
portraits here have met much greater difficulty
and strain. Even more, efforts to link the sug-
gested poets with the scenes around them, as
episodes from their works, have failed. The oak-
wreathed figure has usually been called Lucan,
ever since the first hypotheses of the nineteenth
century, but there is no association between
Lucan and oak wreaths, and the problem thus
posed seems not even to have been broached.
52
The bald man has traditionally been called
Homer, again since the nineteenth century,
though he obviously is not blind.
53
The scenes
around him match nothing in the Iliad or
Odyssey, as the Lucan scenes match nothing in
Lucans epics. The one concrete proposal for the
Homer, that the monochromes fit the descrip-
tion of the shield of Achilles, does not hold up
when checked. One recent proposal has offered
to call the bald man Cicero, but also has not
found a match in his writings for the scenes. To
be sure, though the idea has not been offered, the
scenes here may not be related to the portraits at
all, just as in the inner bay there is no relationship
between Salutati and his scenes. Indeed, it
appears upon further investigation that there is
no such relationship in either of the sets of the
outer bay, thus again separating it from the
majority procedure in the inner bay. The depar-
ture from laurel wreathsthat is, from poets
may be offered as an initial basis for thinking the
system is different here, just as the walls above, in
the outer bay, shift to a narrative set.
The Lucan figure offers ample clues to his
identity. Besides the oak wreath, there is his
youth, always noted in the literature and setting
him apart from all the other portraits. Because he
is depicted without a book, he evidently is not
the author of one, but he holds a scroll instead
(Fig. 87). Classical lore firmly associates oak
wreaths with civic merit. The principal text
establishing this is Plinys Natural History, whose
chapter on plants begins with oak trees.
54
One
need not suppose that the Orvietans consulted
Pliny, for the other relevant text is Virgils
Aeneid, which offers the principal text about men
who have been awarded oak leaves. That text is
in book 6, in the visit to the underworld, the
same episode illustrated by Signorelli in the adja-
cent roundels to the left of this portrait. During
his visit, Aeneas is offered prophecies about his
descendants and is shown their souls awaiting
rebirth. They include his son Silvius, then Pro-
cas, Capys, Numitor, and Silvius Aeneas. Of
these we read (lines 77172):
What youths! See what strength they show,
And have their temples shaded by the civic oak.
These men all succeeded Aeneas as kings of Alba
Longa, before the emergence of Romulus and
Remus, who founded Rome.
55
If this offers a
group of names for oak-crowned youthsthe
only one in a leading text, and, what is more, in
relation to a visit to the underworld, our focus in
this wainscot it remains to ask which one Sig-
norelli shows and why. Virgil first explains that
the young kings are awaiting return to earthly
bodies; it is the chief point about them. They are
souls to whom bodies are owed (lines 71314).
After a long explanation of the theory of
metempsychosis (72451), the individuals who
exemplify it appear, the oak-crowned youths.
This must be considered the best analogue avail-
able in any famous classical poetry for the Chris-
tian resurrection of the dead, painted just above.
It would be odd if such a classical parallel were
not sought out, as in the inner bay the wainscot
shows the underworld in poetry under the
Christian saved and damned.
This might seem to be the full basis for identi-
fying our figure, but the youthful kings civic
virtue, which merited them the oak crown, is
also being treated as relevant. It is hardly to be
discounted that the portrait is adjacent not only
to the Raising of the Dead above, and to the Vir-
gil scenes of the underworld to its left, but also to
the figure of Judith on the nearby keystone (Fig.
88), between him and the Virgil scenes. Judith,
nude like all the nearby monochrome figures, is
famous as the heroine who saves her people from
the enemy. She duly holds her attribute, the head
of Holofernes, whom she killed.
56
The concern
with civic heroes as a distinct motif will reappear
still again in the opposite wainscot, under the
Antichrist scene.
Virgil listed five oak-crowned youths. Is Sig-
norellis the portrait of one of them, or a generic
hero? These people are hardly on record outside
this passage of the Aeneid. Virgil comments on
them in brief terms: Silvius, Aeneass son, is
king and ancestor of kings; Procas is the glory
of the Trojan line; Capys and Numitor have no
epithets, but Silvius Aeneas, the last, is notable
equally for piety and arms. None is more linked
to the resurrection of the dead than the others,
ri t. ; Youth with Oak-Leaf Crown and scenes in
roundels (cf. Fig. 27, x, o, _)
Image not available
but Silvius Aeneas receives slightly more atten-
tion than the rest. A second odd point reinforces
his special status. His name, the most distinct
point we have about him, recurs in one other
famous person in history: Enea Silvio Piccolo-
mini, the Sienese Pope Pius II, whose visit to
Orvieto in 1460 was of interest earlier. In the fol-
lowing decades, he certainly continued to be
remembered in the region through his nephew,
cardinal bishop of Siena before he too became
pope in 1503 and, before then, long the highest-
ranking prelate in the area. In 1502, the likely
year of Signorellis image, he commissioned Sig-
norellis friend Pinturicchio to paint the great
fresco cycle of his uncle Enea Silvios life for his
library in the Siena cathedral.
57
It was there that
grotesques were specified for the decorative
frames. The cardinals entourage included the
archdeacon of Orvieto Cathedral, who paid in
1502 for a more modest library in that building,
frescoed by Signorellis shop and including a por-
trait of Pius II. Although there is little basis for
the idea that the archdeacon provided the icono-
graphic scheme for our big chapel, an elegant
allusion here to the most important Piccolomini
would easily arise.
58
Around the portrait of the oak-crowned youth
were painted three monochrome scenes, as men-
tioned. One is lost, but the eighteenth-century
observer described it with precision: A woman
with a baby in her arms, fleeing from a man.
59
The two surviving scenes both show fights
between pairs of nudes. In the upper one there
are four such fights, and they are over. Three of
the losers are kneeling or on the ground, and the
fourth is slung over the back of the winner.
60
The
lower monochrome shows two such pairs. While
again one loser is pinned to the ground, one fight
is still in progress. The two circular mono-
chromes show images that are more like each
other than any found elsewhere among the
chapels sets of monochromes They may show an
extended view of the parts of the same event,
rather than two distinct episodes as elsewhere.
An analogous case is the monochrome under
Minos, on the altar wall, which extends the scene
of demons torturing the damned that is shown in
color above it.
It has been usual to call the single combats
illustrations of Lucans epic on the Civil War
between Pompey and Caesar, though it shows
no such incidents.
61
What excludes this view is
the new information offered in the early descrip-
tion of the lost third roundel of this set. The early
observer called her Ino, whose story is told by
Ovid (Metamorphoses 4.51930) and by others. A
daughter of Cadmus, the mythical founder of
Thebes, she fled with her baby when her insane
husband pursued her with intent to murder and
ended by jumping into the sea. This writers
descriptions are reliable, even if his identifications
are often wrong. In this case he seems right,
because no other story fits the action in question.
Ovids quite brief allusion to Ino is not likely
to have been the foundation for what is used
here, even if today it is the best known account.
ri t. Judith, keystone of the arch x in Fig. 27
Image not available
If a planner of the chapels imagery wanted to tell
this story, which is part of the great Theban epic
leading to Oedipus, one would again expect him
to turn to a text that has that as its main theme.
62
In that case he would probably have used Sta-
tiuss Thebaid, the best-known such work. The
introductory lines of the Thebaid announce its
theme and tell how, among other calamities, Ino
had no fear of the Ionian Sea when she fell with
her son (1.1314). The very first line recalls the
more famous myth of her father, Cadmus, who
founded the city with the dragon seed and thus
generated the fraternal fights. The fights began
when the warriors killed one another one by one
as soon as they emerged from the earth, as the
product of that seed.
Statius fleshes out these opening allusions in
book 4. The seer Tiresias is asked to clarify the
later calamities of Thebes, and to do so he calls
up from the underworld the ghosts of these
ancestors, and they duly respond to his call. We
see Cadmus and his wife; their sons who press
each other, fight each other, assault each other
with the anger of living men, . . . with thirst to
destroy each other (55760); and shortly after-
ward Ino, pressing her sweet infant to her
breast (56264). The dramatic actions in the
three roundels, of the men we see trying to
destroy one another, and the mother we read
about in the lost one, fleeing, fully match Sta-
tiuss lines about Cadmuss sons and daughter
cited. The group has in common with the oak-
crowned youth, in the image between them, that
their central situation is of returning from death
and from the underworld, either as summoned
spirits in the first case or, in the case of the youth,
to a second life. Despite those differences, these
are evidently the best analogues classical lore has
to offer to the Christian Raising of the Dead
painted above them, and thus like the rest of the
wainscot cycle show that poetry can parallel holy
writ.
Statius was proposed earlier as perhaps the sub-
ject of the lost wainscot portrait on the altar wall,
again as claimed by the eighteenth-century
observer; if that is so, we are being shown the
poet and scenes from his poem at separated
points of the fresco cycle. That same formula had
conspicuously been used, in a less remote way,
with the scenes from Purgatorio 511, and, if the
hypothesis just offered is correct, again with the
oak-crowned youth sung by Virgil. The basic
figuration of the inner bay, in this case with Sta-
tius, would have extensions here in the outer
bay. This arrangement can be compared to the
entire scheme of the Last Judgment in the inner
bay with its preambles in the outer.
Two more small monochrome scenes in cir-
cles appear under the Raising of the Dead, in the
small chapel with the saints bodies. These are the
predella-like martyrdom scenes of the two saints,
already mentioned (Figs. 74 and 75).
63
They are
extensions of the standing figures of the two
saints, who in turn are extensions of the Piet
group (Fig. 72). Here too, just as he had with
Angelico, Signorelli takes the portrait-like figures
from the preceding project, by Master Pietro, but
the monochrome scenes are a newly added ele-
ment.
64
This group of images makes it certain
that the chapel can contain imagery that has a
theme distinct from the Last Judgment, as well as
from the poetic focus of the inner wainscot. The
separate iconographic meaning of the niche with
the Piet has perhaps been too obvious to be
articulated. An occasion was lost to consider that
the imagery of the outer wainscot might also
have a distinct scheme. To be sure, the difference
in reference was easier to see in the former case.
The standing full-length saints do not ask to be
bracketed with the waist-length portraits in
square frames. The oak-crowned youth does
imply a link to the laureled poets, one imposed, I
suggest, by Signorellis effort to present unity of
design.
Faustino, falling to his death in the water, is
on the same level as the monochrome of Ino
running to jump into the sea. However, the
eighteenth-century description does not mention
any water in her case, and the scene may have
shown only her flight on land.
65
Turning the corner to the right, we look at the
wainscot on the entrance wall, which shows two
heads like those of the poets but in circular
frames. The one next to the oak-crowned youth,
under the Fire scene, was almost destroyed in the
seventeenth century when a tomb was installed,
but recent restoration has recovered a small part
of it.
66
The one clear form is the sleeve of the fig-
ures left arm. The white inner garment has no
analogue in the chapel. Because the right arm
apparently did not show, the pose may be recon-
structed turning toward the right. The figure
would then look across the corner at the next
figure, the oak-crowned youth, who in fact is
looking toward it. This is a reasonable recon-
struction, because Virgil and Claudian, the next
similar figures on the same wall as the oak-
crowned youth, also look at each other (Figs. 52
and 53). On the opposite side, instead, the two
outer figures among the four portraits, the Salu-
tati and the one on the entrance wall to be con-
sidered next, look upward and away, while the
two inner ones, Dante and the bald man, follow
in each case the direction of the gazes of the fig-
ures nearest them just mentioned, thus, away
from each other.
The surviving portrait figure on the entrance
wall, under the Five Signs, also is framed in a cir-
cle (Fig. 89). This figure differs from all the por-
traits on the side walls in other basic ways. There
are no surrounding monochromes. Instead of sit-
ting as if at a table, he actively pokes himself out
of his frame, placing himself in lost profile to
look up. (This motif appears in some of the tiny
portraits in the vault frames.) He also has a differ-
ent headdress, a turban. Both the gaze and cos-
tume link him emphatically to the area up to
which he looks, the lower part of the Five Signs
group. There too, it has been noted, upward-
looking is called for, and a figure wears a turban;
another looks up in the Fire scene, with much
the same sleeve. This head in the circle is, then,
in continuation of the scene above, in the way
the figures below Minos are, on the altar wall,
setting up continuity down into the wainscot
area. The basis for all this, again, is the text of
Luke telling us to look up. The continuation of
the admonition down to the lower level matches
Lukes shift from narrative to direct address, in
that we in the chapel are being called on to
notice the end of the world ourselves, in case we
had missed it.
This continuity from the scene to a framed
head appears in one other place, already noticed:
ri t. , Man in Turban (cf. Fig. 68, c)
Image not available
on the altar wall, where Michael and the other
archangels (Figs. 37, 38, 39, and 40) are a contin-
uation of the Judgment scenes. These alone
among such heads also have the circular frames
we see here at the other end of the chapel, and
these are signals telling us to understand them in
the same way, not like the portrait heads in the
square frames that fill the side walls.
Turning the corner again, the wainscot under
the Antichrist scene presents the last of the por-
traits, the bald man with a book (Fig. 90). He is
not Homer, who was regularly shown as blind in
this culture.
67
Having no wreath, he is not a lau-
reate poet, but having a book, he seems to be a
writer, as all the other men with books are in the
series. He lacks any attribute to help in naming
him, such as the oak crown opposite was. But
we are assisted in identifying him by another
kind of art-historical tool, the fact that he is
copied from a type that appears in other works of
the period. The earliest instance of the type is in
the same fresco of Thomas subduing heretics, by
Filippino Lippi in Rome, which was already
noticed as the source for the costume of a nearby
figure in Signorellis cycle, the one with the
trousers and sandals. Filippinos figure so cos-
tumed was one of a group of heretics, and a sec-
ond of that group (Fig. 85) is a model for the
present portrait of the bald man. Baldness itself is
rare in the imagery of this culture. (One painter
of the time who often uses baldness, however, is
Girolamo Genga, a pupil of Signorelli.) Filip-
pinos bald man leans his head forward in the
identical profiled slant and has much the same
costume, which Signorelli alters only by shifting
a round pin to a knot.
The same head alone without the bust recurs
as Cicero, one of the authors the Signorelli
workshop portrayed about 1502 in the library of
Orvieto Cathedral. This is a version in mirror
image, in a circular frame.
68
Finally, he appears in
full length, just like Filippinos original version,
in an engraving of about 1508 by Niccol Rosex
da Modena (Fig. 91). This version is labeled as a
portrait of Apelles, the famous ancient Greek
painter, and is accompanied by geometrical
forms as attributes.
69
The drapery forms follow
Filippinos fresco closely. Because the two other
versions, both by Signorelli or his shop in Orvi-
eto, show only the head, or a little more, it might
appear logical to relate the later engraving
directly to Filippinos original version only, dis-
counting any source for it in the heads. Yet there
may be reason to think that Niccol, in produc-
ing the latest version, was indebted to the inter-
mediate version by Signorelli. Also about 1508,
he engraved a nude Judith, inscribed with her
name.
70
She is the only one in Italy of this period
other than Signorellis monochrome found in
this same outer bay of the chapel. Niccol was
+ nr i x:tr r. or + nr ou+ r r n:. + ;
ri t. ,o Bald Man and scenes in roundels (cf. Fig. 26,
c, i, r, r)
Image not available
also producing many engravings of grotesque
ornaments like Signorellisdesigns that were,
to be sure, favored by other artists too. If it is
then allowed to hypothesize that the engraver
was picking up these motifs from Signorellis
chapel, their only shared locus previously, it
would require supposing that Signorellis bald
man had first appeared in a full-length version by
him, in a drawing. As Signorelli was copying Fil-
ippinos full-length figure of the heretic, that
would not be strange. We would then think of
Niccol in contact with Signorelli in his Orvieto
period, when he also picked up the motif of the
Judith.
There is a separate surprising support for the
proposal that Signorelli first copied the figure
from Filippino in full length. The oddest factor
in Niccols engraving is that he names the figure
Apelles, a painter. Apelles was a classical artist
held in awe; Sodoma, the painter who finished
Signorellis abandoned fresco cycle near Siena,
named his son Apelles. Yet in this era there is no
other recorded image of Apelles. Indeed, there
are few full-length images of painters. Yet we
have seen two such in the outer bay of the
chapel, just above the bald man who is a version
of this figure; they are Signorellis self-portrait,
and Angelico with him. It seems too good a
coincidence that Signorellis bald man has close
relationships, both to artist portraits (painted just
above him) and separately to the Apelles engrav-
ing (with the same head), when the latter com-
pared works separately have a tight link to each
other (as full-length portraits of painters, which
are very unusual at the time). This redoubled
linking was evidently caused by something. It
could be explained easily if one hypothesized
that there had been one more element, now lost,
that was linked to them all. It would be natural
for Signorelli to have drawn a copy of Filippinos
frescoed heretic, as suggested above, since he
both admired Filippino and was exploring ways
to represent heretics, a new field for him. Once
completed and taken to Orvieto, the drawing
would be on hand for more than one use, in the
Antichrist scene with its standing figures of
heretics and of artists, and below for the bald
head. If the figures of standing artists, when ini-
tially sketched, retained something more like the
costume of Filippinos heretic and of Signorellis
drawing from him than they now show, as might
easily happen, they would be precisely what Nic-
col drew and engraved: a standing artist adapted
from Filippinos original figure. The equally rare
nude Judith shows that Niccol could have been
ready to pick up sources in Orvieto, and the
Apelles figure would be another. The hypothesis
is perhaps more complicated in the telling than in
action, but it is repeatedly grounded on a series
of firm factors.
ri t. ,+ Niccol Rosex da Modena, Apelles, engraving
Image not available
The bald man so far is unidentified, but three
other versions of his head have proved to have
namesthe Filippino heretic, Cicero, and
Apellesso one might think he is one of these.
But the bald man is not Apelles, because he has a
writers rather than a painters attribute. And
although Cicero was certainly a writer, the claim
made for him started with the clearly wrong pos-
tulate that the same head (as seen in the library)
implicated the same identity. The Apelles dis-
proves that inference. That argument also sug-
gested that the monochrome roundels here
illustrated scenes from Ciceros Philippics, but no
specific parallels are availablethe same difficulty
as with the proposal for Homer. To be sure, this
does not prove that the head is not Cicero, but
he has no indicated role in relation to other
images in the schema of the chapel, something
that always seems to be involved.
The head might show a fourth unknown per-
son, but the one remaining clue offered by its
previous versions, that it shows a heretic, seems
to have much in its favor. The bald man in the
wainscot appears just under a scene all about
heresy. (The equation of heretics with Antichrists
is a tradition going back to Augustine.
71
) This
would make him a direct extension or footnote
of the large scene above, much as the oak-
crowned youth is from the scene above him, of
the Raising of the Dead.
It is conspicuous that in exploring the theme
of heresy Signorelli repeatedly takes motifs from
Filippino Lippi, which he rarely does otherwise,
and that the motifs are from a wide range of Fil-
ippinos works. This occurred above, in the
Simon Magus, from Filippinos early Brancacci
series, and again above in the scene of Antichrist
resuscitating a dead man, from the very recent
cycle at Santa Maria Novella. A costume detail
was taken from the same source, and that same
detail and the figure wearing that costume were
copied in the Five Signs scene from Filippinos
Rome fresco cycle of Aquinas. The latter is also
the source of the bald man here. Apart from the
images of heretics, he seems to follow Filippino
only in the lively grotesque ornament. He will
shortly be found doing so once more, in a figure
adjacent to the bald man.
Art historians have commonly discussed such
borrowings, though none of these has been.
They are usually linked to proposals about travel
by the borrowing artists, in years when their
locations are undocumented, to see the works
being cited. In this case such a reconstruction
seems quite cumbersome, evoking a whole Filip-
pino tour. However, the borrowings could have
taken place all at once, with personal contact. In
that scenario, Signorelli would have talked to Fil-
ippino, whom he can be presumed to have
known, about the challenging project for these
new scenes about heresy. Filippino would have
responded helpfully by referring to several solu-
tions he had worked out from time to time for
similar aims. He would have accompanied these
remarks with drawings, perhaps kept in his stock
(he certainly did keep drawings), which Sig-
norelli could take or copy. This conversation
would have taken place in 1502, when the Santa
Maria Novella fresco by Filippino, the latest of
the sources, was assuming its final form, and also
the year when the Antichrist fresco can quite
probably be dated. Signorelli was away from
Orvieto for months in that year and could easily
have passed time in Florence, where Filippino
was at work.
72
A friendly talk about heresy
imagery is the implication. Filippino was the
artist with the more assured career at the time,
but he could also have welcomed motifs from
Signorelli.
73
The particular heretic in Filippinos Aquinas
fresco that is the base of Signorellis bald man is
labeled by Filippino as Sabellius. Aquinas is
shown triumphing over six heretics, all of whom
are given names. The list is taken from one in
+ nr i x:tr r. or + nr ou+ r r n:. + ,
Thomass Summa against the non-Christians.
74
Was Signorelli especially interested in the heresy
of Sabellius, so that he copied his head? The idea
is natural, but involves some difficulties. The
nature of Sabelliuss doctrinethe heresy that
God the Father is not of another substance from
the Son and the Holy Ghost, that is, that the
Trinity is a unityseems not to resonate with
the themes of the Orvieto chapel. It can also be
noted that there do not seem to be any images in
this culture of Sabellius alone. As in Thomass
text, he invariably turns up as a name in a group,
as if to pad it out, unlike the more prominent
Arius.
75
This permits the alternative reading that
Signorelli wanted a head to personify heresy
quite generally, and picked the one among Filip-
pinos figures that seemed most evocative.
Indeed, in Filippinos set this is the most striking
and isolated character type. The case recalls the
situation with the oak-crowned youth directly
opposite, who may represent a specific young
Roman king who was resurrected but perhaps is
not a particular one from the set of names.
The wainscot once showed, near the bald
man, a monochrome figure in the keystone of
the arch over the small chapel. It corresponded to
the Judith in that position opposite. Several writ-
ers have suggested that this lost figure was David.
In 1502 Michelangelos David was under way in
Florence, the city that might well have been on
Signorellis mind at the time. In the same Floren-
tine context, David and Judith had been viewed
as a pair, often in a political context. The most
obvious case was in the Medici palace, for which
Signorelli had done two paintings. There
Donatellos David was in the front courtyard,
with an inscription about freeing the people, and
his Judith was in the back courtyard, with an
inscription about overcoming tyranny. The stat-
ues are not a pair in a strict sense, but David and
Judith so presented could also be found in Flo-
rence.
76
In the Orvieto keystones, a pairing with
David might help to explain Judiths exceptional
nudity, if the David were nude as well. It seems
likely enough that he was, like the nudes of
Donatello and Michelangelo and all the nearby
monochrome figures in the outer bay. No added
basis for the identity of the lost figure with David
has been offered, but one connected with the
motifs of politics and tyranny will be offered
shortly.
The portrait of the bald man, the heretic, is sur-
rounded by three monochrome scenes, once
again. The most complex scene, the one at our left
(Fig. 92), shows a group in such elaborate detail
that it must be presumed that a specific scene is
being represented. The figures nudity cannot be
realistic, but must be a convention of art. This can
more easily emerge in monochromes, which sug-
gest relief sculpture, which in turn suggest Roman
sarcophagi and other admired classic references.
The denuding of Signorellis Blessed was no doubt
a reinforcing factor in extending nudity from
fighting scenes to wider contexts. Michelangelos
Cascina cartoon is a contemporary token of this
extension, to a scene not about fighting even
though it is about fighters (the artist rationalized
the nudity by having them in swimming, a nov-
elty). Raphaels Massacre of the Innocents is another,
and the same is the case here. We see two cap-
tives, hands tied behind their backs, guarded by
two men with weapons. (The incident in the Iliad
proposed as the subject does not involve tied
hands or captivity at all.) Behind them, another
man makes a gesture of speaking, addressed to still
another who is standing on a box. The latter is
apparently the one who will decide what to do
with the captives. He turns to the side toward two
older men, who could offer counsel on the mat-
ter, and at the same time stretches his hands
toward the captives, showing them to be the sub-
ject of the query. One more man in the fore-
ground, seen from the back, has no obvious role
beyond watching and may be an onlooker, like us
or the nearby figure under the Five Signs. The
guards weapons are pilae, spear points mounted
on long shafts, reinforcing the classical implica-
tions. Botticelli gave one to Athena, guarding a
centaur, in his Pallas and the Centaur for a Medici
house. This very precise scene indeed cannot be
found in Homer or Cicero. The most delimiting
factor for an identification is that the captives are
two. It is common to find stories of single prison-
ers or of large groups, but this is clearly a special
case.
The monochrome at the top of the set shows
five figures (Fig. 93). In the center, a woman is
under violent stress, and in reaction four men
surrounding her lift their arms, perhaps to keep
her in bounds or calm her. The womans pose
could well suggest running, and then the two
men in front might be trying to stop her, but the
two men behind would be difficult to explain.
Just such a female figure is frequent in images of
this time. However, in such images she is not
running, but under intense stress as if vibrating.
The formula has been the theme of a classic short
article calling her The Maenad Under the
Cross.
77
Florentine artists around 1500 were
shown to have taken the pose from classical
sources, such as sarcophagi, to show Mary Mag-
dalene, not moving but expressing despair. A
vivid instance is the figure of Virginia learning
she is to be murdered by her father, in a narrative
panel by Filippino Lippi (Fig. 94). Botticelli
showed her in much the same way, if less vividly
isolated, in a panel of the same subject.
78
These two narratives of Virginia are both pen-
dants of panels about the far more famous Lucre-
tia. The two stories share a textual source in
ri t. ,: Captives Judged (cf. Fig. 26, i; detail of Fig.
90)
ri t. , Maenad Among Men (cf. Fig. 26, c; detail of
Fig. 90)
Livys History of Rome (Lucretia in 1.58, Virginia
in 3.46)
79
Signorellis stressed figure is indeed
Lucretia, who expressed her desperation pre-
cisely in the company of four men. After Tarquin
raped her, she sent for her husband and father,
who quickly came, each with a friend. The last
point is important because the husbands friend
was Junius Brutus. Botticellis Lucretia panel
(Fig. 95) shows Lucretia with the four men; one
reacts with lifted arms, like Signorellis men. The
quite frequent images in the period of Lucretias
suicide usually show accompanying men, some-
times two (husband and father) or three (with
Brutus) but perhaps most often four.
80
A long
search has not unearthed any other image of the
period of a distraught women with four men. It
may still emerge, but would be a less established
story than this one, which fits well on all points.
The actual suicide is the most frequent
moment chosen in the images, but Botticelli
shows the preceding moment, in which she
expresses her anguish, and so does Signorelli in
the monochrome. The choice is validated by a
remarkable text, the Declamatio Lucretiae, written
by none other than Coluccio Salutati. Today this
writing is less noted than others by him, but it
was the reverse in the fifteenth century. Fifty
manuscripts of it were listed in a study of 1971
(including just five later ones, from the sixteenth
century), and one more can be added.
81
This is an
amazingly high number, as one may judge from
an authoritative comment that the thirty-four
manuscripts of one of the works of Ficino, the
chief philosopher at the Medici court, are
extraordinary, a number not attained by any
other work of his.
82
Salutatis text consists
entirely of a debate between Lucretia and two of
the men, who try to dissuade her from suicide,
and her responses. It ends when she finishes her
speech. Thus the distinct value of this phase of
the story before her death is established.
83
Botticellis image of this moment is seen on
one side of a wide panel. The center shows the
next incident in the story. Junius Brutus vows
revenge and calls for the expulsion of the rapist
Tarquin and his whole royal family. The estab-
lishment of the Roman republic followed, with
Brutus as one of the two initial consuls. The
point that the central meaning of the story is
political, about freedom from royal tyranny, has
always been plain. Botticelli underlines this, plac-
ing in the center, above Brutus, a statue of David
with the head of Goliath. To our left he adds a
narrative relief sculpture of Judith killing
Holofernes. Both are naturally in monochrome.
This clusterLucretia and the four men, Judith
and the probable Davidrecurs in Signorellis
wainscot.
After these events, Livy next tells of a threat to
the new republic. The exiled Tarquins failed in
an effort to return by force, in which they had
enlisted Brutuss own two sons. The consul fol-
lowed the law by condemning the two sons to
death, which is what the left roundel shows. Livy
ri t. , Filippino Lippi, Death of Virginia (detail). Paris,
Louvre
Image not available
and Plutarch describe it; the latter reports how
the father asked the sons to defend themselves,
and how when they were silent he turned to
the lictors, who seized the youths and bound
their hands behind them.
84
The incident is no
longer famous today, as Lucretias suicide is, but
was a major motif in Signorellis culture. Brutus
was the chief model of the just judge. He appears
as such in the public imagery of Florence (in the
judgment hall of the wool guild), Siena (in the
guild loggia, with the sons two severed heads as
his attribute), and Padua (in the Sala Dei Giganti,
today in a sixteenth-century version, where two
predella-like scenes show respectively the four
men gazing at the dead Lucretia and the consul as
witness to his sons execution). In Siena he recurs
about 1530 in a cycle by Beccafumi in the city
hall, again with the two heads. Close to the Siena
compositions is a woodcut illustration in a vol-
ume published in Rome in 1494, Priscorum her-
oum Stemmata, by Thomas Ochsenbrunner. In
Romes city hall, on the Capitoline, a fresco by
Ripanda of 15067 showed him watching his
sons being beheaded, and in 1586 in the same
building the theme was repeated on a larger
scale. The frequency of these images seems not to
have been registered by art historians, so that
another, like this of Signorellis, fails of recogni-
tion. The ethics of Brutuss action were debat-
able. It is approved as just by a speaker in one
work of Boccaccios because it preserved liberty,
while in another the consul is attacked for inhu-
man cruelty.
85
The chancellor Scala, in late fif-
teenth-century Florence, in the Medici ambient,
said Brutus acted contrary to nature. Machiavelli,
on the other hand, approved his act as needed to
solidify the republic.
86
Even as it later faded from
view, the story gained its grandest echo in 1789
in Jacques-Louis Davids monumental painting,
an innovative episode of the bodies of the sons
delivered to Brutuss house. In 1997 one could
still find the New York Times naming Brutus as a
liberator from tyranny. This occurs in a long
excerpt from an earlier speech by Senator Robert
Byrd, who had praised Lucius Junius Brutus,
who after long rule by kings made the Romans
ri t. , Botticelli, The Story of Lucretia. Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Image not available
swear that they would never again subject them-
selves. In this case too there seems to be no
other event that matches the image shown, this
time of a judge turning to consult about the fate
of two bound prisoners. The doubling of this
identity with that of Lucretia and the four men
nearby seems decisive.
Botticellis panel, with Lucretia and the four
men at the right and Brutus at the center, shows
Tarquin attacking Lucretia at the left. As in other
images of the theme, for instance Titians, he
bends toward her and clutches a dagger. That is
evidently what we also see in Signorellis third
and last monochrome of this set, a half-circle cut
by the entrance to the little chapel. It shows a
warrior advancing with a spear, evidently ready
to attack the person who would occupy the
other half of the roundel.
There is a single message shared by these three
roundels about Lucretia and Brutus, by the pre-
sumed David in the keystone nearby, by the
Judith in the opposite keystone, and by the oak-
crowned youth near her wearing the crown of
civic heroes. All honor those who fight or act in
behalf of their nation or city. All these images are
clustered in one part of the chapel, in the wain-
scots on the side walls of the outer bay, in an
assemblage of heroes who share this quality taken
from varied sources. They do not have a further
message relating, for instance, to the Last Judg-
ment (with one exception, the oak-crowned
youth), and that is the one factor that creates
doubt. To suggest a shift here to a different sub-
ject calls for good support, despite the repeated
evidence leading the same way. To be sure, the
wainscots did allow for variation. Even in the
inner bay, the recurrent theme from the poems,
of brief visits to the underworld with returns to
earth, leaves a space that does not fit exactly the
theme of Last Things. Perhaps this separation can
be wider in the outer bay, which starts out as a
slightly loose annex to the main subject.
The reading of these images as praise for civic
heroes gains support from a small element of the
fresco cycle not yet mentioned.
87
The vault trian-
gle that abuts the entrance door, the one with the
virgin saints, includes in the far ends of its two
lower corners two identical coats of arms, those
of the Monaldeschi family, which means that its
members claim status as patrons of the chapel
(Fig. 83). The coats are part of a system that also
shows the arms of the Cathedral Board of Works
between them, at the top of the entrance wall.
The Monaldeschi did not claim the chapel as
their own, but their help is documented in two
money gifts from separate family members, the
only relatively large sums known to have been
offered.
Giovanna, widow and heiress of Pietroantonio
Monaldeschi, got a receipt from the administrator
on February 29, 1500, for one hundred florins
received from her on account of the bequest of
her late husband for the painting and ornamen-
tation of the new chapel in the said church.
88
The date precedes by just under two months Sig-
norellis second contract, the one for the entire
chapel. The first area he painted under that con-
tract was certainly the vault of the outer bay,
including the triangle with the virgin saints. The
money had been owed since the husbands death,
so it seems plausible that the decision to hand it
over after delay at this time matched the indica-
tion that it would now actually be needed, as the
work got under way. It might well have appeared
imprudent to give it earlier, during the long,
dragging negotiations with Perugino.
The other bequest was by Achille Monalde-
schi, a fifth cousin of Giovanna but still counted
as a member of the same branch. His will of 1494
assigned one hundred florins with quite similar
phrasing, to be obtained from the sale of land
for the painting and ornaments of the new
chapel to be paid within two years of his
death.
89
He is reported to have died in 1497.
The cathedral accounts record receipt of the one
hundred florins for a bequest made in the will of
the said master Achille in July 1505.
90
Some
have found it puzzling that the payment of the
bequest was so long delayed, and some have
inferred that the money could not have been
used for the paintings, despite Achilles instruc-
tions, in view of the much earlier completion of,
and full payment to Signorelli for, his work.
However, a second document puts a different
light on the matter. A record in a different
account book of the cathedral, apparently also of
1505, notes the receipt from Achilles widow of
twenty florins for part of the bequest of the said
Achille.
91
It has been overlooked that it is a par-
tial payment, which means that the bequest was
paid in installments. The other record of July
1505, receipting the entire bequest and thus the
complete gift, is therefore a summing up of such
installments now complete and proves that the
other installments must have been paid earlier.
Hence, any delay after the testators death was
shorter, and quite probably at least part of the
money was available for the painting. The two
Monaldeschi bequests together covered a consid-
erable portion of the fee due Signorelli in his
larger second contract, 575 florins, and so mer-
ited inclusion of the coat of arms. The surfaces in
the triangle on which they are painted seem to be
part of the original work, not added later, and so
tell us that when it was executed in 1500 both
bequests were at least partly paid or ensured. This
intervention has not been observed in studies of
the chapel.
Pietroantonio had been a member of the
committee in the 1480s and so would have
appreciated the importance of such money. One
might speculate that he and his wife recruited
Achille to make a similar gift, thus ensuring that
the family contribution would be substantial.
But the most interesting aspect of their role, at
least with respect to the former couple, is on
record in a different form. The widow Giovanna
arranged for a plaque inscribed with an appreci-
ation of Pietroantonio to be installed just outside
the chapel entrance, at the left, and therefore
also next to the familys own chapel. The
inscription read: His father having been exiled
by tyranny, he nonetheless conducted himself
with equanimity, and had care for the republic,
with other patricians, with such integrity and
faith that no one surpassed him in public char-
ity.
92
Praise of character and deeds are conven-
tional enough in such memorials. What separates
this one is its opening point that Pietroantonios
behavior was in spite of the evil done to his
father Gentile by tyranny. Certainly what is
on record about local history hardly validates
that charge. Gentiles exile had if anything
marked the end of tyranny by the family, fol-
lowed by a more collegial government by com-
mittees of citizens and churchmen. The plaques
account of Pietroantonios later life is consistent
with the latter point. However that may be, his
widows expression about him sets up a distinct
analogy with the series of civic heroes painted in
the chapel. To be sure, it seems an outrageous
hyperbole, albeit not very surprising, to equate
Pietroantonios career with the way the consul
Brutus, and the others, first suffered under
tyranny and in the end responded by doing civic
good. Yet, along with the coats of arms, it seems
to clarify the stimulus for the civic imagery
inside the chapel.
That all this has little or nothing to do with the
Last Judgment gives pause. Yet that is also true of
the imagery of Faustino and Parenzo, and even
more so of the opposite Chapel of Mary Magda-
lene, not part of Signorellis commission.
93
The
civic images may have been assigned to the wain-
scot of the outer bay because of this analogy with
these other images external to the Judgment,
next to them. Almost all the civic images, being
in monochrome, are thereby bracketed with the
illustrations of the poems, which are also distinct
from the Last Judgment and a factor not contem-
plated in Angelicos plan. The sole full-color fig-
ure among the civic images, the oak-crowned
youth, may be the exception that tests the rule.
Unlike the others, the youth has a double associ-
ation: with the civic motifs and with the Raising
of the Dead above him. In that aspect he evokes
the extension of the latter theme into the world
of classical poetry. Possibly this served as an entry
point for the other civic representations.
94
Renaissance culture permitted such intrusions
into thematic sets when a partial patron subsi-
dized them, though this is a concept contrary to
expectation. A vivid instance of 1455 is on
record, another rare case when committee min-
utes allow us to learn what took place before a
contract was signed. In a debate about the choice
of saints for an altarpiece, one member inter-
vened to offer to pay part of the cost if his patron
saint would be included, and it was done. A stan-
dard analysis of the paintings iconography would
never have come to that true explanation.
95
A still
further relevant point about Giovanna and her
husband is the fact, mentioned earlier, that their
marriage had been arranged by the husbands
godfather, the future Pope Paul II. At that time
the relevant factors were Pauls link to an abbey
near Orvieto and the reconciliation of the two
Monaldeschi branches. Here it can be added that
the couple would later have been in a good posi-
tion to know about the popes tomb, with its
unusual Last Judgment. Its introduction of the
fight against heresy would be relevant. Thus the
allusive interplays of the culture, from formal to
social, systematic and casual, add up to more than
the sum of the parts. At the end the fresco cycle
turns out to have been the fruit of an array of
human drives and interests, pressed into a united
strength by the designers hand.
r xvoi
+nr r:rii rs+ ri rx evidence of a response to
the frescoes in the Cappella Nuova is from 1503,
the year the work on the mural cycle was com-
pleted. It is a drawing by Raphael of a foreshort-
ened figure copied from the most emphatic one
in Signorellis Fire from Heaven scene. On one
level this immediate response is not remarkable.
A few years earlier, Raphael had copied another
Signorelli, drawing from a figure in a Signorelli
altarpiece in the town of Citt di Castello. Now,
in 1503, at the age of twenty, he was a virtually
equal collaborator with Signorellis personal
friend Pinturicchio in the great fresco cycle in
Siena about Pope Pius II. In fact, the drawing in
question is on the same sheet with a composition
sketch by the young artist for that cycle.
1
One
may reasonably infer, therefore, that on a trip
from Siena, probably to his current base in Peru-
gia, Raphael detoured through Orvieto to have a
look at the new work by the other senior master
of this coterie. These two copies of Signorelli
support the hypothesis, offered above, that
Raphael produced a third copy, also involving a
foreshortened figure in the Orvieto cycle, when
he painted his roundels of Faith and Charity. In
any case, Raphaels adoption of this element is in
accord with Vasaris later report that Signorellis
cycle was especially good in such motifs as its
many foreshortenings and that it thereby
stimulated those who came after.
This early copying is even more impressive
when it is noted that the second firm case of
copying is by Michelangelo, as also reported by
Vasari. Besides the imagery of Michelangelos
Charon and Minos, invariably pointed out, it
extends to others, such as the rising sequence of
saved souls and the self-portrait. The two great
masters may be defined by the divergent forms of
their responses: Raphael to visual motifs (which
Vasari would also emphasize), and Michelangelo
to iconographic ones. Michelangelo did not repeat
Signorellis forms, despite sharing with the older
artist the focus on muscular action that no doubt
first drew his attention to Signorellis figures.
The iconographic aspect received more atten-
tion. The firm knowledge that these artists
observed Signorelli supports hypotheses that the
same thing happened in other cases. This has
been discussed above in the case of the engraver
Niccol da Modena, with the argument that his
three quite separate, if nonvisual, reuses of Sig-
norellian motifs indicate that he had gone out of
his way to look at the Orvieto cycle. Because
Orvieto is on a hill and not on the way to any-
where, one must go there on purpose, and
Raphael is a precedent that shows this did hap-
pen. Even though Niccols nude Judith and
full-length portrait of a painter do not look like
Signorellis, and his grotesques look like those of
other artists as much as Signorellis, the accumu-
lation of analogies, some unique, suggests that
the analogies are significant.
After Michelangelo, the cycle continued to be
interesting to artists faced with a similar challenge,
Gilbert.Envoi 10/23/02 3:06 PM Page 157
an assignment to produce a big mural about the
Last Judgment. One special case is in the work of
the Torresani brothers, who produced such a
mural in the small town of Rieti not far from
Orvieto in 155256.
2
In what seems to be the only
case after Signorelli, the brothers devoted a trian-
gle in the vault of their chapel to the Blessing
Christ and continued with other segments like the
Orvieto model. They had only one bay and made
modifications to suit, and their pictorial approach
is not Signorellian at all, although the connection
has rightly been noted as clear. A similar situation
appeared in a grander case, when Federico Zuc-
cari took on the job of completing the Last Judg-
ment in the dome of Florence Cathedral, left
unfinished by Vasari at his death. Two drawings
by Zuccari of details from the Orvieto cycle prove
that he made a research visit to Orvieto as part of
his preparation.
3
The constraints of the dome
shape, and the previous work on the project,
probably prevented him from making Michelan-
gelos Last Judgment his model, as one would oth-
erwise have expected him to do. That choice did
become the norm thereafter, and Signorellis work
disappeared from this kind of imitation. If Sig-
norellis examples were considered at all, they may
well have been rejected on theological grounds, as
suggested by passages in a book of advice about
good and bad art published in 1582 by the cardinal
archbishop of Bologna, Gabriele Paleotti. Even
though the book was not completed, and there-
fore is not likely to have had much direct effect
(except on recent art historians), some passages are
relevant here.
4
Paleottis allocation of four chapters
to the evils of grotesque ornamentmore atten-
tion than to any other theme in the bookis
unexpected, but it is less surprising that he objects
to the presence in church imagery of Plato (as on
the Orvieto faade) and Orpheus (as in Signorellis
wainscot). Classical antiquity was believed to be
dangerous, which is contrary to the culture seen in
the Cappella Nuova.
That was apparently the end of appropriating
iconographic motifs from the Orvieto cycle, but
the copying of single pictorial details had a
revival long afterward, again most visible to us
with renowned artists. A study of the drawings
by Czanne after old masters permits the obser-
vation that, among those after these masters
drawings, there are more after Signorelli than
after anyone elsefive. All are based on two
drawings related to the Orvieto project.
5
More
recently, Jackson Pollock, in his twenties, copied
poses of figures from the cycle, specifically after
angels from the Assembly of the Blessed.
6
(Like
Czanne, Pollock worked from reproductions in
books.) To be sure, he did this only while under
the tutelage of his teacher Thomas Benton, a
devotee of fifteenth-century painting. At the
same time, the twentieth century has seen
another basis for fascination with Signorelli: the
ideology of sex from Freud on. Besides the case
of Freud himself, cited in the Introduction, there
is the interest in homosexual contexts, as illus-
trated with E. M. Forster
7
and Paul Cadmus.
8
It
seems that various ages find their own bit of Sig-
norelli to adopt.
9
This is in accord with the habit
the monographs have of presenting each segment
of the chapel as a separate unit, paying little
attention to the whole.
The modern viewers mentioned, with their
dependence on books containing reproductions,
remind us that still another angle on the frescoes
has had great power, that of the historians. They
begin with the local erudite writers of the eigh-
teenth century: Clementini, for his precious
reports of now lost details, and Della Valle, both
for his grand scale engravings that first expanded
awareness of the work and for his archival materi-
als that shed light on the local context.
10
These
two historians saw the Cappella Nuova as a histor-
ical monument of Orvieto and dedicated a new
kind of civic pride to presenting it. The cathedral
committees had expressed their civic pride by
+ r xvoi
building a cathedral and commissioning artists;
Clementini and Della Valle, among others, used
their archival sources to produce a new monu-
ment, honoring Orvieto in their scholarship.
Della Valles engravings brought painters to
Orvieto from distant places. The German
Nazarene artist Johann Friedrich Overbeck
wrote in 1813 from Orvieto to a painter friend in
Rome that Signorelli was among the masters of
the first class, as much so as Raphael.
11
This was
the first time Signorelli had been moved up from
a position in a chain of progress, where Vasari
had already put him, to a status on his own, not
to mention one so high. This treatment is part of
the historicism then emerging as a scholarly
approach, rejecting the notion that art pro-
gresses, but is also related to a preference the
Nazarenes had for Angelicos portion of the
cycle, something in which they remained alone.
The combination of a sense of history and an
admiration for the cycle soon led to the first
efforts at restoration of the frescos, by visiting
Russian painters in 1845.
12
Then 1879 brought
the first scholarly monograph on Signorelli, by
the German Robert Vischer. Monographs on
Renaissance artists were not uncommon by that
time, but there were few on artists that worked
before the High Renaissance. Among those
artists, Signorelli was the leader here too, as with
the series of engravings after his work, almost a
hundred years before.
There is nothing surprising in the observation
that each age has defined its own favorite Sig-
norelli. Most works of art that continue to be
regarded as of the highest quality produce such
effects. (In this instance one era, the seventeenth
century, is missing; it is distinguished chiefly for
having destroyed some parts of the Orvieto
cycle.) The only general conclusion to be drawn
is apparently that the next age will discover still
another Signorelli.
13
Yet it might still be urged
that this book should offer conclusions from its
own new approach, the focus on the production
process in the chapel.
A call for conclusions at the end of a book is
usual and natural, when the book consists of
arguments based on points of evidence, as this
one does. Yet it is also true, if rarely brought for-
ward, that such books as this in many cases do
not present explicit conclusions, an omission that
easily passes unnoticed if not made articulate. In
particular this can happen when the text, as in
this case, is a narrative. Described events follow
each other and then end. If those events seem to
embody a single strong purpose, a conclusion
will decide that it has been achieved or not. If,
however, the events are an organic life, as that of
a person, they may move through phases under
varied external influences until they eventually
stop, as with the persons death, and it is accept-
able that there was no meaningful conclusion.
One expects a completed work of art to exem-
plify the former of these two possibilities, the
achievement of purpose, or its failure.
This fresco cycle, however, perhaps surpris-
ingly, has turned out when its production is
investigated to be involved in a long series of
unrelated accidental shifts, pulling it each time in
another direction. There is to begin with (since
one must begin somewhere) the unusual circum-
stance of the call for a transeptal chapel without
the standard function of chapels. There is the
accident that the painter called on to paint its
walls, Fra Angelico, successfully proposed a
theme that was of interest to him but that had no
previous local significance. When Angelico left
his work unfinished, his successor after a long
interval amended and adjusted the project in
ways that seem to have been unplanned before,
particularly in monumentalizing the episode of
the Raising of the Dead. The rest of the outer
bay was first assigned a theme at this time, a com-
pletely novel set of images. Quite separately, the
wainscot at this point was enriched from being a
r xvoi + ,
line of heads to a unique new statement, appar-
ently called for and perhaps designed by a power-
ful local individual. A smaller insertion, of the
imagery of civic virtue, was inserted separately at
the same point. Each of these events has been
reported in its own segment of this book, and
conclusions about it drawn, but a general conclu-
sion may be no more appropriate than it would
be in a persons life affected by changing forces.
Perhaps a methodological conclusion is appropri-
ate, that one should be wary of seeking single
conclusions.
This pattern is familiar in other contexts,
among them in monuments of architecture. We
know that at Chartres one tower of the cathedral
was built centuries after the other and presents a
different periods style, and we are not made
uncomfortable as to our feelings about the build-
ing. If a similar observation has not been made
about Orvieto, is it because completed monu-
ments of painting make that more difficult? It
may instead result from another element of the
production not listed above, one in which Sig-
norellis artistic personality played almost the
only role, as it did not in the choice of themes.
As has been noted at various points, Signorelli
often asserted unity in the work, notably in the
use of frameworks and ornament. It seems likely
that he was seeking to hide the projects patchy
evolution and has had great success.
That success seems due in part to Signorellis
particular approach to the painting of form that is
implied, though not stated, by Vasari, his earliest
commentator. Vasaris judgment on this fresco
cycle was quoted at the beginning of this book.
Perhaps more important is the writers choice of
the place he assigns to Signorelli in his book,
as the last artist presented in the second of his
three parts. In this part, as the author had
explained in his preface, he deals with the masters
of the fifteenth century, who are admirable for
their realism, especially in the drawing of figures.
They lack, however, something that Vasari
admires as a new skill in the later artists of part
three, in the sixteenth century, the soft grace that
lets them blend the figures with their airy world
in an easy symbiosis.
Signorelli, at the end of the second phase, is
near enough to the third to have been able to
influence it more than almost any other artist of
his time, by convincing the viewer of the move-
ment and energy of his figures. He does this more
in the Orvieto cycle than he ever does elsewhere,
assisted, one may guess, by the special stimulus of
the energetic theme. Yet the figures are still hard
and wooden in surface. That hard solidity, which
is yet capable of releasing energy, is also no doubt
what has attracted modern artists, from Czanne
to Beckmann, Benton, and Cadmus, suggesting
in them a trace of archaism. Its other benefit is
that it makes the figures congruent with the firm
and heavy frames, giving the whole a unity that
the later artists tended to discard.
We are thus surrounded in the chapel by a
huge ring of such figures asserting their vitality
even at the point of death or while returning
from it, equally so at all points around us. To be
sure, when we register this hedge of bodies all
around, we may be led to notice a refined shift in
presentation between the two bays. It is only in
the more inventive outer bay (in which, also,
Vasari saw everything he found to admire in the
cycle) that this row of bodies is, as well, posi-
tioned not in a narrow forward stage but in a
deeper space. That is the case everywhere in this
bay, shown here by the foreshortened figures and
there by the remote temple attacked by
Antichrist. So Signorelli registers his ongoing
thought and evolution, only slightly exposed
within his imposing singularity of assertion. One
may be confident that he will offer more new
perceptions to the next observers.
+ o o r xvoi
xo+ r s
Introduction
1. Vasari 1966, 2:633.
2. Vasari errs in calling this a
Chapel of Our Lady, and this state-
ment never seems to recur any-
where else. That designation is a
token of how puzzling the chapels
lack of any normal dedication, to
be discussed, must have seemed.
3. Vasari 1966, 2:637.
4. Vasari 1966, 2:636 n. 1.
5. Rothgeb, 116, reports that
only one other book by Freud
rivals this one in number of Ger-
man editions and number of for-
eign languages into which it has
been translated.
6. Freuds explanation centers on
the word Signorelli, not the look
of the paintings. To us this may
seem surprising, because the latter
may seem to relate well to Freudian
concern with the extremes of
human experience and with the
body as their vehicle. In his first
account, an 1898 article, Freud calls
the theme of the cycle a very
slight factor in his block (Freud
195574, 3:392) and even omits
that phrase in his book the next
year, where he modifies his account
of his chat with the fellow-traveler.
He had earlier written that he had
recommended Orvieto to the trav-
eler, but this time he only reported
asking whether he had been there.
However, Freud reverses field in
the next chapter of his book, which
is about suppression of another
word in connection with death and
sex. There he adds a footnote to say
he is not fully convinced of the
lack of an inner connection
between the theme of the fres-
coes and his block. These shifts are
suggestive. Freuds reaction is not
discussed in Signorelli monographs,
but here it is one example of this
books added materials.
7. Some of these are cited
throughout this book on particular
points. Any not cited again do not
appear in the bibliography.
8. The illustrated books are all
titled Luca Signorelli or a near
equivalent, with or without the
name of the chapel as a subtitle.
Following older books by Enzo
Carli in 1946 and by Mario Salmi
in 1953, they include books by
Carlo Carr (undated, about 1968),
Antonio Paolucci in 1991,
Jonathan Riess in 1995, and Dugald
McLellan in 1999. With the
notable exception of the distin-
guished artist Carr, these authors
have also produced more serious
writings cited in this book. Riesss
volume is notable for departing
from the traditional way of naming
the sequence of the chapel frescoes,
discussed in this Introduction, in
favor of one essentially like that
argued here, even if the type of
publication makes his description
inevitably brief and unexplained. A
short list of old and new errors in
these books, for the use of nonspe-
cialist readers, is in note 13 below.
Of the dissertations, that by Gloria
Kury of 1974 on the early paintings
of the artist was fully published.
Those by Jonathan Kanter of 1989
on the later paintings (including a
chapter on the chapel similar to
those described here), by Tom
Henry of 1994 on the paintings of
the 1490s, and by Claire Van
Cleave of 1995 on the drawings led
to related articles, which are cited
here. That by Gtz Kraft of 1980
was photocopied in a few copies,
in a system standard for German
dissertations; it offered a theory of
the artists narrative, and that by
Sara James of 1994 discussing
liturgy is on microfilm, but neither
has had other public circulation.
That by Dugald McLellan of 1992,
though unpublished, made avail-
able unknown documents cited
here; see Chapter 5, nn. 88 and 91,
and Bibliography.
9. These numerous publications
are cited below in association with
the aspects of the work they dis-
cuss.
Gilbert.Endnotes 10/23/02 3:06 PM Page 161
10. Testa 1996. The articles in
this book discussed in the present
one, and individually cited in the
bibliography, include those of
Andreani, Barroero, Bertorello,
Castelli, Cieri Via, Clementini,
Dacos, Davanzo, Kanter, Mencar-
elli, Paoli, Testa, Van Cleave, and
the present writer.
11. Hence the lack of agree-
ment about attributions is equally
present here. A rare token of this
uncertainty is available in two
studies on the issue by the same
author, with changed views on the
internal chronology, not noted as
such (Kanter, dissertation of 1989
noted above, and article of 1996).
12. Scarpellini, 4052; Moriondo,
1822; Dussler, xxxixl. The most
extreme such case, perhaps, is in
the guidebook Umbria of the
Touring Club Italiano (1978,
45963), where the single seg-
ments are helpfully diagrammed
and marked from A to G in an
illustration marked scheme of the
frescoes. It may also be the most
surprising case because users of the
book might be expected to want
to know what the theme is. In the
usual guidebook this lapse might
be put down to ignorance in a
nonscholarly book, but this partic-
ular guide is well known for the
input of scholars and its use by
them. The theme is also totally
omitted in the standard mono-
graphs on Angelico, to be sur-
veyed below.
13. The recent illustrated books
on the chapel mentioned above
modify the monograph pattern in
part, and for the better. That by
Carli cites the theme of the Last
Judgment at the start but then
retains the usual sequence of
images. That by Carr does so as
well, while erroneously saying the
chapel was dedicated to San
Brizio. That by Riess erroneously
says it was dedicated to the
Assumption, which may diminish
acceptance of his major improve-
ments. Notable among these is
Riesss changed sequence of
scenes, the same as the one pre-
sented here and in the brief guide
by McLellan. One only regrets
that these authors do not build on
this foundation, but continue to
treat the segments separately,
unmindful of the continuity past
columns and around corners of
single scenes. This omission again
must diminish the persuasiveness
of the reading, as does Riesss firm
and also erroneous report that no
document reports any plans for the
walls by Fra Angelico. Riesss
inclusion of comments on the role
of heresy in Orvieto is also valu-
able, although his fuller discussion
of that theme in his book on the
Antichrist scene has rightly been
called doubtful.
14. The term monograph is
also applied to such books, notably
in French usage. In that context
the distinction made between this
book and monographs would be
unclear. However, that less com-
mon usage would be a problem
only if the matter is not noted.
Chapter 1
1. Waley is the standard citation
for the period up to 1300. Political
in focus, Waleys book never
mentions the cathedral. There is
no similar study for the later cen-
turies. Perali has much valuable
material, including the connec-
tions with art.
2. Lambert, especially sections
2:4 and 3:7, is the standard study.
Wakefield and Evans, especially
sections 2325, 4753, and 5660,
make sources conveniently avail-
able.
3. Lambert, 115.
4. Natalini, 15556.
5. Pastor, 6:59596n, provides
materials about the earliest pre-
served documents.
6. Carli, 12328, with excellent
illustrations, figs. 24549.
7. The attribution of this liturgy
to Saint Thomas is not generally
accepted today. It did have a plau-
sible basis in the fact that he was
living in the Dominican convent
in Orvieto at the time. The origi-
nal role of the Dominicans as sol-
diers against the Albigensian
heretics would involve him in
these concerns.
8. Bonelli 1972.
9. Middeldorf Kosegarten, 17.
A careful recent study (Freni, 123)
notes that no reliable source
mentions the celebration of the
feast in Orvieto before 1337, but
also that it would surely have
been celebrated in Orvieto after
1317 as part of the really wide
diffusion of the feast throughout
Christendom. However, unless the
cloth relic only arrived in the
town about 1317, and the account
of its having arrived fifty years ear-
lier is hence to be regarded as a
mytha hypothesis that no one
seems to offerthe object on
which the feast depended had
been present since the earlier occa-
sion in 1264 and was at all times a
natural basis for a pious cult just as
later. Having more basis than else-
where, such a celebration could be
expected earlier there than in most
+ o : xo+ r s +o r:tr s xi v
places. The stimulus of the unusual
significance of heresy in Orvieto
seems not to have been considered
in this connection. Once it is
accepted that celebrations took
place from 1317 without appearing
in known records for the next
twenty years, it is difficult to take a
similar lack of records to signify
the absence of celebrations earlier.
One may also reconsider a local
chronicle of the early fifteenth
century, which describes a Corpus
Domini celebration as having
taken place in connection with the
foundation of the cathedral in
1290. Even if this account expresses
idealized memory . . . rather than
[a] faithful narration, as recent
writers have argued (Freni, 137 n.
49), it is arguably more likely to be
the idealization of something
rather than a complete invention,
and might then be linked to the
role of the relic chapel in the plan
of the cathedral, as discussed in the
present study.
10. Bonelli 1988, 16 n. 7.
11. Gillerman, 300.
12. Gillerman, 303.
13. A Byzantine reliquary of
this kind is reproduced in The
Glory of Byzantium, no. 35.
14. Gillerman, 303 n. 16, is
among many who quote the line.
15. Gillerman, as in the preced-
ing note, is among those who note
the timber roof as a likeness. This
is valid materially and conceptu-
ally, but not visually, because the
ceiling in Rome is flat and the one
in Orvieto is pitched with open
trusses.
16. Krautheimer, 312.
17. Krautheimer, 312.
18. Cf. Carli, 15, who also cites
Bonellis similar view.
19. Bonelli 1988, 12.
20. Gillerman, 307, also citing
earlier writers.
21. If we agree that the Roman
secular building was the model, we
must privilege the visual likeness
and disregard the functional differ-
ence. If we accept the Roman
model for the Orvieto ceiling, as
above, we must think in the oppo-
site way. This may have occurred,
but the phenomenon complicates
the hypothesis.
22. Bonellis reconstruction of
the flank, reproduced by Giller-
man, fig. 7, makes this graphically
clear.
23. Harding, 126.
24. If the designer was proceed-
ing as here suggested, he would
have had to think about the shift
in media, and aspects of the work
suggest that this happened. Both
the need to mark the boundary
between the media, and the oppo-
site need to produce a unifying
flow, appear to be articulated. The
former appears in the bronze
sculptures, the sole strongly three-
dimensional element, positioned at
the boundary, and the latter appears
in the roughness of carving at the
top of the reliefs. They resemble in
effect the glitter of the tiny mosaic
units. Following Whites much
admired proposed explanation of
the rough effects, that the reliefs
were simply never finished, con-
trary arguments have been offered
(Schlee, 120), claiming that the
rough cutting was applied over
finished carvings. The continuing
activity of building and decoration
at the cathedral in the following
years also may cast doubt on the
idea that these panels were left
incomplete.
If the reason offered here for
using such low relief is accepted,
there remains the problem of a
visual model that might have
evoked this specific style. One
may be proposed in a nearby ear-
lier art, the classical Roman pottery
called Aretine ware. As here, it
shows graceful figures against large
blank planes. Admiration for this
ware is evinced in a remarkable
text of 1282 (Ristoro dArezzo,
137), reporting that sculptors and
draftsmen admired the new finds
of these ancient fragments. That
detail virtually entails a search for
reflection of the style soon after-
ward. This topic, which requires
further study, was initiated with
my seminar students at Leiden
University in 197273.
25. Harding, 124, indicates
that the mosaic cost 418 percent
as much as a fresco cycle in the
church. The sculpture would
cost a good deal more than the
frescoes.
26. In 1307, just before the
sculpture project started, there was
a problem of stones thrown at the
building that left many figures
and windows and doors broken
(Fumi, Duomo, 213). Mosaic
would probably have been still
more vulnerable. In December
1981 vandals damaged some of the
sculpture.
27. Pius II, 1:286.
28. Riess, Antichrist, 911, also
notes praise of the cathedral build-
ing by Pope Alexander VI, in a
letter from Orvieto of November
30, 1493. The letter is even more
exceptional in offering specific
praise of the faade, called lo pus
bell frontispici que temple al mon
tinga (Borgia, 711). Preceded by
xo+ r s +o r:tr s + + + o
Pius IIs praise and followed by
that of Leandro Alberti, noted
below, this evokes a perhaps
unique recurrence of praise for
trecento sculpture in this time.
29. Alberti, 1553 edition, 56r.
The authors dedication is dated
January 19, 1550, and he identifies
an item of February 24, 1550, as a
postscript (223r). Other items are
identified as being written in 1549
(289r, 300r). The author (1479
1552) presumably used travel notes
collected over a long period.
30. Taylors work supersedes
earlier proposals, although some of
his inferences may be debated.
31. Weisheipl, 14963.
32. The Glory of Byzantium, no.
53, quoting earlier studies.
33. Quoted and translated by
Geanakoplos, 395.
34. Lambert, 56. Wakefield and
Evans, 16869, cite, among others,
a comment of 1266 that through-
out France these persons are called
Bulgarian heretics.
35. Schiff, 11.
36. Taylor, 135.
37. Dragut, passim. An account
in the June 21, 1998, New York
Times travel section, with large
color illustrations, has made this
material much more accessible. I
am indebted for much help to
Szombor Jekely. It was solely the
likeness as to small, allover imagery
on the exteriors that first stimu-
lated this inquiry; when it was
pursued, the likeness in iconogra-
phy appeared, an equally rare one.
The connection seemed thus to
gain much support.
38. Grabar, 36582.
39. Bonelli 1972.
40. It is sometimes believed that
a papal decree of 1318 making the
feast obligatory everywhere
enhanced the Orvieto cult of the
relic beyond a much slighter ear-
lier presence. However, the feast
had earlier been celebrated in vari-
ous individual places, and Orvieto
would be a likely one. The new
decree would probably increase
pilgrimages.
41. For Alberti, 56r, writing in
1549, the procession is the one
activity in Orvieto that calls for
notice.
42. Carli, 12328, gives an
excellent account.
43. Bonelli 1972.
44. Studies of the stages of the
cathedrals construction do not
seem to mention this older sac-
risty. We learn of it only through
its demolition (Andreani, 422,
docs. 3, 5).
45. Fumi, Duomo, 171.
46. Andreani, 422, doc. 20.
47. Andreani, 424, docs. 36, 38,
4042.
48. Andreani, 424, docs. 35, 37,
43.
49. Andreani, 424, doc. 35; 426,
doc. 69; 429, doc. 126.
50. Andreani, 435, doc. 226.
That it was hidden thoroughly
may be suggested when elsewhere
(Andreani, 429, doc. 143; 432,
doc. 196) bodies are described as
recondite in a coffin.
51. Andreani, 432, doc. 192.
Fumi, usually very reliable, had
reported with no source (as he
sometimes did) that the bequest
was for a chapel in onore della
Vergine Assunta and says his basis
was a formal decree, but none
has been found (Fumi, Duomo,
171).
This record of 1411 assigns to the
Monaldeschi as a chapel, in return
for the one they are losing, an
altar under the title of the Coro-
nation of the Virgin and renames
it for the Magi in honor of the
Monaldeschi patrons. It is puzzling
that the authorities had assigned
the title Coronation even
though they had not obtained the
money bequeathed in 1396 for a
chapel with that dedication
(Andreani, 423, doc. 22). Perhaps
they had counted on the money
and given the name in advance but
when they were not paid took the
occasion to remove the name.
54. Fumi, Statuti, 21 n. 1.
55. Andreani, 435, doc. 226;
436, doc. 237, a payment of two
and a half lire for elevando taber-
naculum Assumpte. Some writers
have misinterpreted this to mean
that the tabernacle was removed.
56. Andreani, 436, docs.
14959.
24142.
27275. This too was done after
much delay, nine years after it was
first voted.
59. Andreani, 441, doc. 319.
60. Andreani, 442, doc. 323.
61. Andreani, 442, doc. 324.
62. Andreani, 445, doc. 387.
31729, 362, 363.
64. Cappella Nuova seems to
have been still the usual name in
1729, an astonishing run from
1400 (Andreani, 445, doc. 382).
The new name is standard from
1739, and the name had been used
earlier for the altar (Andreani, 445,
doc. 379). Earlier still there is a
+ o xo+ r s +o r:tr s + + +
joint title, Chapel of the
Madonna di San Brizio called the
Cappella Nova (Andreani, 444,
doc. 376, in 1724).
65. In 1910 the form was the
chapel dedicated to San Brizio,
with no justification, the earliest
official use I have noted. It is a
curious point that the excellent
editor, summarizing a document,
begins to use the name of San
Brizio when discussing records of
1685 (Andreani, 443, doc. 343)
and then continues that approach.
Such anachronism can have real
and wrong effects, as when a seri-
ous scholar (Baldini, 108) says that
Fra Angelico painted the chapel
dedicated to San Brizio; another
(Pope-Hennessy, 33) summarized
records by saying Angelico was to
paint the chapel of the Madonna
of San Brizio. He then says
Angelico worked in the chapel of
San Brizio, where the
Corporal . . . was preserved, and,
later (p. 214) varying the same
point, that the artist worked in
the chapel of the Corporal, or of
the Madonna of San Brizio, in the
south transept, which had not yet
been painted. The Chapel of the
Corporal is the one opposite, in
the north transept, painted in the
preceding century. The confu-
sions, not unique, may reflect the
chapels lack of any dedication at
all, which is so uncommon that
one is supplied even if wrong.
Unofficially, Chapel of San
Brizio appears in John Addington
Symondss life of Michelangelo in
1893, presumably not for the first
time.
35324.
67. Andreani, 426, observes that
from 1321 the series is almost
uninterrupted.
68. These include the contracts
for the frescoes of Signorelli and
others, discussed in detail below.
12526.
70. For the four references, see
Andreani, 430, docs. 15557 and
159; for the theme, see doc. 152.
71. Andreani, 437, doc. 241.
72. Andreani, 441, doc. 302.
73. Andreani, 429, doc. 426;
430, docs. 15052.
74. Bacci, 279350. Gilbert
1991, n. 32, cites a misreading of
chapel, which led to a scholars
creation of a nonexistent chapel
room.
75. A similar caveat applies to
the dedication and name of the
cathedral. Trustworthy sources (as
Enciclopedia Cattolica, s.v. Orvi-
eto) report that the modern
name, Santa Maria Assunta, was
present from the beginning in
1290. Most early formal references
read Santa Maria Maggiore,
including Pope Nicholass letter
cited earlier and Signorellis con-
tracts. In a breve of Pope Sixtus IV
(r. 147184) the cathedral is that
which Nicholas IV began to
build under the title (vocabulo) of
the Glorious Mother of God Mary
the Virgin (Sannella, 84). Formal
titles of 1758 (Testa, 473) and 1845
(Andreani, 446, doc. 392) call it
S. Maria della Stella, so
Assunta must be later than that.
76. The chief one is a chapel
built in the 1460s on the nave
floor, like a shed, with a bequest
from a Bishop Monaldeschi. Fumi
(Duomo, 42737) presented this
well, with early documents calling
it cappella nuova in 1463 (xv,
xvi), while in 1465 it is the
chapel commonly called of the
Madonna della Tavola (xx, again
in 1480, xxiv). Some later accounts
have taken this Monaldeschi
bequest to be for our chapel.
78. Andreani, 435, doc. 226.
79. The phenomenon of unfin-
ished churches inducing civic
shame seems common and would
repay study. In many cases, com-
pletion came centuries later, as in
Cologne, famous for the crane left
on the roof for centuries and seen
in many views. It became a marker
of the city. In Florence, one
would cite faades of major
churches added in the nineteenth
century, at Santa Croce and the
Cathedral, or never, as at San
Lorenzo.
Chapter 2
1. Fumi, Duomo, 171, while
surveying these events, notes the
consistent use of the term
nuova.
3. Fumi, Duomo, 22424, docs.
4243. The committee liked the
masters low price but still stipu-
lated that his work must be per-
fecta et utile et bona.
4. Andreani, 424, doc. 34. Fumi
omitted this record from his publi-
cation, which was long the stan-
dard reference, and it received little
attention in the earlier studies.
6. Oddly, the form to which he
had recourse is not the one stan-
dard in Italian, which is scialbada.
A Latin cognate, also derived from
albus, white, exists, but all this was
evidently beyond the scribes ken.
xo+ r s +o r:tr s + : + o
7. Only one of the tourist sites
in Rome recorded by a visitor in
1450, Giovanni Rucellai, was a
contemporary work in fresco; it
was by Masolino. To be sure, its
fame may not have extended to
the artist, whose name Rucellai did
not mention (Gilbert 1988, 134).
8. Christiansen, 34, reports in
his brief biography on Gentile and
the pope. Gilbert 1988, 198, docu-
ments the status of Gentile and
Pisanello as the most famous artists
of the time in Italy.
9. Orlandi, 189.
11. Hollingsworth, 3, may typ-
ify both this widespread view and
the paucity of evidence for it. She
summarizes in her introduction:
It was the patron who was the
real initiator . . . he played a signif-
icant part in determining both
form and content . . . it was the
patron, and not the artist, who was
seen by his contemporaries as the
creator of the project. Elsewhere,
more correctly in my view, she
speaks of patrons wish to show
their wealth or power but seems to
hold that they must initiate both
that and the thematic content, not
allowing that the former goal
might be achieved by engaging a
prestigious artist to work up a
theme.
12. Glasser, the standard study,
is actually based on close study of a
very few cases, but they are
acceptable as typical.
13. Gilbert 1998 explores these
cases and many similar ones, along
with a wide range of patron-artist
interactions with respect to
themes.
15. Gilbert 1975 explores this
character trait.
16. Andreani, 42425, doc. 49.
17. Testa and Davanzo, in Testa
1996, 35, with citation of similar
views offered in 1986 by a
Dominican writer. They believe
this is explained by Angelico being
a theologian, and they evidently
assume that special explanation is
needed because consultation with
painters about themes would not
otherwise occur. Yet this hypothe-
sis is negated, apart from other
points, in that Angelico was not,
and was not regarded as, a theolo-
gian. The Orvietans identify him
simply as a friar, which would
imply only literacy. They decided
to consult him as an outstanding
painter. In any case, if theological
skill had been their focus, they had
experts on hand who could have
developed a theme at any earlier
point. These included the arch-
deacon, who had been involved in
these arrangements to find artists
and who was a doctor of law (pre-
sumably canon law), as they noted
in 1446 (Fumi, Duomo, 225, doc.
44).
18. A large exception is the
active literature about one scene,
Signorellis Deeds of Antichrist,
and a variety of references to
events around 1500 have been
cited to explain it. It is the cycle as
a whole whose inspiration has not
been a major subject of attention.
19. Andreani, 431, doc. 181;
434, doc. 214.
20. Verheyen, 21, notes that
questions of dimensions, size of
the figures played a large role in
the negotiations between artists
and Isabella dEste, who was prob-
ably the best-documented art
patron of the Renaissance. A letter
to Isabella from the painter Francia
(Luzio, 564) is a good example.
21. The standard study of fres-
coes of this period, by Borsook,
notes in passing (p. xxxii) the high
positive correlation between Last
Judgments and large surfaces as a
given. Her instances, however,
extend only through the first half
of the fourteenth century, after
which time she turns to a survey
of the use of such surfaces for
unique themes.
22. A recent comment (Testa
and Davanzo, in Testa 1996, 3637
n. 16), which makes use of a
recent more detailed study,
Baschet, speaks of the theme as
continuing in the fifteenth cen-
tury. However, of the twelve cases
cited, only two are in central Italy:
that in San Gimignano cited here
(the date 1413 given is not firm)
and one to be discussed later, that
of 144551 in Terni, too late to
have been considered by Angelico.
(Of the rest, one is in the far
southeast, in the Abruzzi, and all
the rest are in the north beyond
the Apennines. The Genoa area
alone accounts for seven of these
nine.) Omitted from Baschets
list are two large mid-fifteenth-
century Judgments in Siena that
are in a different context: as ele-
ments in cycles of the twelve arti-
cles of the Creed (cf. H. van Os,
Vecchietta and the Sacristy of the
Siena Hospital Church, The Hague,
1974, figs. 28, 45). Angelicos
series of five Judgments are thus
isolated in his lifetime and region.
It may reasonably be inferred that
the Last Judgment is not a theme
that a patron there would be likely
to propose. Another small Sienese
+ o o xo+ r s +o r:tr s : : ,
Last Judgment of the same period,
by Giovanni di Paolo, will be dis-
cussed below. Its iconography dif-
fers from the norm.
23. It starts, as is not surprising,
from the usual but unfounded
belief that from 1396 the chapel
had been planned to be dedicated
to the Assumption. It then finds a
doctrinal link in the area of escha-
tology between the cult of the
Virgin and the Last Judgment. The
latter does of course involve that
topicthe theology of the end of
the worldbut no relationship
between this and the Assumption
is offered, nor is any obvious. The
Assumption took place in histori-
cal time. Mary, with many other
persons, has a role in the Last
Judgment, but in the chapel her
role is only the traditional one.
Because this proposal has not been
published, it is cited here anony-
mously, as a matter of fairness; a
published proposal may be assumed
to include all the proponents best
arguments, but one not yet so pre-
sented may not do so. Yet the idea
of explaining the chapel by some
relationship between the Judgment
and the Assumption would arise so
naturally that it seemed to call for
any possible consideration.
24. Paoli, in Testa 1996, 6575.
25. Andreani, 425, docs. 54, 55.
27. Fumi, Duomo, 36, docs. 16,
17; 433, doc. 1.
28. Andreani, 432, doc. 191.
29. Mencarelli, in Testa 1996,
91.
30. Andreani, 435, doc. 223.
31. The document contains an
error in saying Signorelli has been
hired not only to paint but also to
finish the chapel, and this may
explain the misreading cited. As
will be discussed in more detail, at
this time in November 1499 he
had a contract for the vaults only,
agreed to in the previous April
(Andreani 434, doc. 220). The
contract to finish the chapel was
drawn up the following April
(Andreani, 435, docs. 225, 227). A
possible reason for the scribes
error in November is that by then
committee members whose discus-
sion the scribe was recording had
taken for granted that Signorelli
would get the rest of the job, so
they might well have talked in that
sense.
33. The Baptist is entitled to be
called a prophet, having foretold
Christs mission, and he appears in
theological writings as the last
prophet. However, images of sets
of prophets rarely include him,
while those of saints include him
often (Metsch, 10, on the prophet;
14459, with other saints).
34. Pope-Hennessy, 33, 21415,
plates 12425.
35. Baldini, cat. 107.
36. Schottmuller, xxx (The
theme was the last things),
15256 (captions), 23435 (cata-
logue entry).
37. Argan, 109.
38. Among the prophets (so
labeled) identifiable in the triangle,
only Aaron does not recur in the
panels. In iconographic tradition in
general he was a minor figure.
Although his rod is distinctive, a
recent writer who did identify
Moses and David here did not
note his presence. An approach
that sought a special direction of
cult in the Orvieto imagery might
cite him (and Christs globe) as the
exceptional details that could offer
clues toward its discovery. He has
a front seat, but he may only have
his frequent role of reinforcing the
importance of his neighbor Moses.
39. Such scenes as the Adora-
tion of the Magi are consistently
cut in two by architectural systems
in French Gothic ivories of the
fourteenth century, objects pro-
duced with industrial uniformity.
40. Filippo Lippis schema here
closely follows that used for the
same subject by Masolino, in his
cycle at Castiglione Olona. In
Masolinos case one might argue
that the beheading on the other
wall is a different scene, but several
factors, in addition to the Lippi
imitation, favor the view that it is
part of the one scene continuous
with the banquet. From Giotto
on, the two events had tradition-
ally been shown in one scene. The
corner shows no frame line, of the
kind present at the outer sides of
both episodes. Within the space a
line at the top inner edge of the
floor is continuous in both. A col-
umn near but not quite at the cor-
ner might suggest that Masolino
wanted to keep the angle from
being disturbing, yet not deny it.
41. Outstanding instances are
the Parthenon frieze and the
mosaics at Daphni.
42. Drawings of whole narrative
compositions by Gentile Bellini
and Carpaccio exemplify the pro-
cedure. They show stick figures,
evidently as initial steps in a design
process. These are followed by
more-detailed drawings of figures
and parts of compositions. Ames-
Lewis, 13944, associates these
drawings with earlier ones by
Angelicos assistant Gozzoli.
xo+ r s +o r:tr s : , ; + o ;
44. According to calculations by
Goldthwaite, 436, 438, in 1447 a
skilled craftsman in Florence
received 19.6 soldi a day, and an
unskilled worker earned 11 soldi.
45. In Florence in 1471 the
painter Baldovinetti paid 5 soldi
per quire when he bought 16
quires (of 24 or 25 sheets each) of
paper of the reale size, about 18
24 inches. It was specified as the
cheapest available, da straccioas
we might say, scratch paper
(Kennedy, 246). The huge differ-
ence between this price and that of
the gavantone evidently includes
difference in paper quality and a
price increase in the intervening
years, suggested by Ames-Lewis,
22. The price of the Orvieto sheet
probably included the paper-
makers skilled labor in gluing sev-
eral sheets together and perhaps
sizing it.
46. Landau and Parshall, 1617.
47. Degenhart and Schmitt, 1:2,
no. 399.
48. Bober and Rubenstein, no.
76.
no. 399.
50. Berenson (no. 532) gave the
youthfulness of the face, which for
him was incompatible with the
ideality of Angelicos style, as a
major reason for assigning the
drawing to Benozzo.
51. In the workshop of Raphael
in Rome, assistants on fresco cycles
did produce both drawings and
related segments of paintings,
which might encourage such a
proposal in this earlier case. How-
ever, with Raphael this is in the
context of undertaking many
simultaneous jobs. Angelico, quite
the opposite, had nothing else to
do in Orvieto. He was fifty or less,
undertook fairly long journeys to
Orvieto, and at the same period
produced four fresco projects in
Rome promptly, all circumstances
suggesting that his health was
good.
no. 398.
53. Florence, Museo di San
Marco, 105 210 cm. Its unique
shape is explained below.
54. See note 22 above. Angelico
may have known just one frescoed
Last Judgment of the fifteenth cen-
tury, the one already mentioned in
San Gimignano, doubtfully dated
1413 and attributed to Taddeo di
Bartolo.
55. Brenk provides a thorough
survey from the earliest images to
the twelfth century. Regrettably
there is nothing similar for the
subsequent period. Mle, Religious
Art, 36589, presents an excellent
survey for France in the thirteenth
century.
56. Most of the figures emerge
from tombs, but the very tiniest
emerge directly from the earth.
The mix of two arrangements
seems to be unique, absent even
from the closely derived Last Judg-
ment at Viboldone; it may have
added to the physicality and claims
to reality in Giottos work, and
perhaps also have made maximum
use of the squeezed space for
expressive goals. Later images,
including Signorellis, dropped the
formula with tombs to show all
the souls issuing from the earth,
but it seems unlikely that they
were influenced by Giotto, whose
figures of this kind seem to have
been ignored in the modern schol-
arly literature too.
57. Heaven passed away as a
scroll that is rolled up (Revelation
6:14). A much earlier example is in
Herrad of Landsbergs Hortus Deli-
ciarum of circa 1180 (edition of
1977, plate 68), where it is in an
otherwise standard Last Judgment.
In Giotto this is one of several iso-
lated cases where a motif from Rev-
elation is seen in a schema
otherwise entirely based on
Matthew and Corinthians, the usual
texts. Mle (Religious Art, 35664)
accurately observed that the textual
reference used for the Last Judg-
ment made a major shift from Rev-
elation to Matthew and Corinthians
around 1200. The recurrent refer-
ences of our own age to the later
imagery as apocalyptic appear to
reflect a generalized new age fas-
cination with such texts that at
times blanks out the absence of any
specific motifs from that source in
the works.
58. While the chapel recalls the
one in Orvieto in its position and
in being much bigger than the
churchs other chapels (except the
one matching it in the other
transept), it should be stipulated
that the church in Florence, unlike
Orvieto, does have a normal
transept also, beyond which the
chapel simply extends the structure
still further outward. There is no
fusion here of transept and chapel
functions like that seen in Orvieto.
59. The use of three walls has a
partial precedent before Nardo in
the Baptistery of Florence (as well
as at Viboldone, near Milan, cer-
tainly unknown to Signorelli). The
Last Judgment in the dome of the
Baptistery occupies three segments
+ o xo+ r s +o r:tr s ;
of its octagonal structure, and that
pattern might well have inspired
Nardo. The center segment in the
Baptistery too shows Christ judg-
ing and the tombs below, while
the two sides are devoted to the
saved and the damned. However,
the shift from wall to wall is not a
right angle, as in the later chapels.
It is of just forty-five degrees, and
visually may hardly be noticed
because we view the mosaics from
far below. We are not inside the
angled space and do not need to
turn our heads. Hence it is not
surprising that the segments have
never been given separate titles.
The dome mosaics, unlike almost
all other work of their era, contin-
ued to be admired even in
Angelicos time, making the influ-
ence suggested plausible. The fif-
teenth-century comment by
Corella is most accessible in
Gilbert 1988, 176.
60. San Juan, 23637; her study
is a rare case of attention to
Nardos work as a model for any
motif in Orvieto.
61. Villani, 450. On the date
1395, see Meiss, in Brieger et al.,
1:40 n. 31. For a different
approach, see Elliott. Meiss, 80,
cites Villanis remarks on Dantes
reports of the afterworld being
viewed as true and as aided by the
Holy Spirit.
62. Early examples survive in
England, circa 1250, where the
artist W. de Brailes also included
his signature nearby (Alexander,
fig. 238), and in Germany, where
the master carries his chisel as he
issues from his tomb (Gerstenberg,
37). I am indebted to Walter Cahn
for both citations. In the sculp-
tured Last Judgment on the faade
at Orvieto, a man in unusual mod-
ern costume with a T-square
appears among the saved, and it is
generally and reasonably accepted
that he too is the artist, the head
master Maitani. Two younger men
in modern dress with him may be
his assistants (Middeldorf
Kosegarten, frontispiece). Sig-
norellis reflection of this formula
will be discussed later.
63. A motif unique in Last
Judgments is the presence among
the little square tombs of a single
grand sarcophagus in the center,
the identity of which seems not to
have been discussed. It may well
be the tomb from which Christ
rose at the Resurrection. Angelico
showed that in his fresco of the
Resurrection at San Marco, cell 8.
64. Gatti Perers survey of
images of the Heavenly Jerusalem
clarifies its rather rare application
to Last Judgments, 13536, naming
Angelicos as the latest.
65. Danielou thoroughly sur-
veys the texts of the Greek writers.
For the anthem, see Sicard, 135.
66. Lehmann-Brockhaus,
39597, notes that the work has
no analogies in style in its region
and plausibly links it to artists of
the Marches and Umbria, notably
Ottaviano Nelli. Heaven includes
the obsolescent three patriarchs
with souls in their laps, as in the
Florence Baptistery and the Last
Judgment of the Abbey of Pom-
posa, circa 1350; the author notes
other cases in the Abruzzi. The
bridge over which souls enter the
garden points to use of the
twelfth-century monk Albericuss
vision of the underworld (summa-
rized by LeGoff, 188) as the tex-
tual source. It makes another rare
appearance in a manuscript in the
Victoria and Albert Museum,
1221, folio 153r, reproduced by
Kren, fig. 143. See also Chapter 4,
note 25.
67. The commentary by the
Greek father Theodoret, circa 400,
on Pauls ascent to the third
heaven (Migne, Patrologia Graeca
82: col. 448), reports dancing souls.
Supino 1909, 8182, cites the
hymn; I am indebted to Alfred
Torisano for a fuller account of it
(Gilbert 2000).
68. Studies of the fresco in the
Spanish chapel have assigned the
garden a status as preparatory to
heaven (Offner and Steinweg, 38)
or as the earthly paradise at the top
of the mount of Purgatory (Polzer,
26368), not as itself a part of
heaven. These did not take into
account the similar imagery in
Angelico and in the Abruzzi. In all
three cases the figures are enjoying
the garden, not seeking to leave it
for the heavenly city. The idea of
the two parts of heaven, with its
early textual basis, seen in the two
Last Judgment images, might well
have been borrowed in the Span-
ish chapel for the theme newly
created there.
69. Florence, Museo di San
Marco, a segment of the silver
cupboard door; Baldini, cat.
116ii.
70. Baldini, cat. 111; 101 117
cm.
71. Berenson, 2:48.
72. The strict frontal portrait is
contrary to the well-known
monopoly of profiles in painted
Florentine portraits of this date,
yet it recurs twice in other portrait
drawings by Benozzo. These are
both of small children (Degenhart
xo+ r s +o r:tr s : + o ,
and Schmitt, cat. 400, 427, Uffizi
101r and 20r) and so might well
have been subjects connected per-
sonally with the artist, as Fra
Angelico also was.
73. It is sixth in chronological
order in a survey of self-portraits
from the fourteenth century on
(Masciotta). The earlier ones con-
sist of two doubtful cases, by Tad-
deo di Bartolo and Masaccio,
Ghibertis two bronze self-por-
traits, and one by Fra Filippo Lippi
that remained idiosyncratic.
Benozzo shows for the first time
among surviving works a formula
that later becomes standard, where
the artist is at the outer edge of a
crowd of onlookers in a large
scene. Raphaels School of Athens
offers a classic later example. In
Orvieto, Signorellis self-portrait
with Angelico (Fig. 28) belongs to
this type, allowing the hypothesis
that the gavantone by Angelico
might already have used it. In that
case it would have been the model
for Benozzo, as other motifs in
Angelicos chapel design have
proved to be. Angelico in turn
could easily have received a sug-
gestion for it in Orvieto, from the
self-portrait by Maitani in the
sculptured Last Judgment there.
Maitani too stands at the edge of a
crowd near the frame.
74. See note 60 and related text
above.
75. Dacos, in Testa 1996, 227 n.
9.
76. Baldini, cat. 110, 56 74
cm.
77. A. Henry, 11324.
78. Andreani, 425, docs. 6971.
81. The corresponding English
word flourish, however, has this
as a secondary meaning in English
dictionaries. Rifiorire, meaning to
restore a painting (Tommaseo,
sense 9), does not involve flowers
and probably should not be linked.
The word is exemplified in Rubin-
stein, 66 n. 66.
82. Payments in December for
making the scaffolding
(Andreani, 427, docs. 7778) refer
to labor for three days and to
twelve beams.
83. Andreani, 427, docs. 9697,
100.
84. The board at present has
reduced income and alms and can-
not meet the expenses of Master
Giovanni who began to paint
(Andreani, 427, doc. 100).
85. Andreani, 427, docs. 101,
103.
86. Andreani, 428, doc. 107.
87. Andreani, 429, doc. 143;
Testa, La cappellina, in Testa
1996, 26971. A signed painting
by the master Pietro, originally in
Perugia, is in the museum of Kiev
(Testa 1996, 273 n. 19), and several
other works have recently been
attributed to him.
88. The use of the term to spec-
ify how to depict Christ, ad
modum Pietatis, strongly suggests
that a known formula was being
invoked. Christ is shown standing
in the tomb. That this is what
modum Pietatis meant is sup-
ported by the use of the similar
term figura Pietatis in sepulcro in
the document of commission for a
work in Bologna, of almost the
same date, 1469, which shows this
same motif (Bottari, 93). Today the
term Piet evokes the quite differ-
ent arrangement by Michelangelo
in his Piet in Saint Peters, Rome.
The document ordering that work
calls for una Piet . . . cio una
Vergine Maria vestita, con Cristo
morto in braccio. Study is needed
to show whether the term had
changed meaning by 1498, the year
of Michelangelos work, or whether
both terms were in use simultane-
ously (see Michelangelo 1875, 613).
89. Andreani, 431, doc. 181.
90. Rossi, 29092, a document
that is not included in more recent
publications of the Orvieto
records.
Chapter 3
1. In France, the home of feu-
dalism, the entrance doors of
cathedrals are often found adorned
with Last Judgments, which might
fit such a reading. On them, see
Sauerlnder, 2628. The schema in
these seems to have in common
with the Italian mural images an
ultimate source in Byzantium.
Variants in France from that
source do not seem to have been
widely influential in Italy. See also
Chapter 2 note 55.
2. Money offerings received
from the faithful by the clergy in
the Baptistery were then deposited
with a special committee of a guild
of merchants, who were skilled in
finance and by this civic service
gained a proud public status with a
benevolent quality. It was the
guild that made decisions about
hiring artists and others (Paolucci,
281). The situation in Orvieto was
rather similar.
3. This survey is selective and
omits some large murals. Among
these are the relatively remote one
at Santa Maria Donna Regina,
Naples, about 1320, and the frag-
+ ; o xo+ r s +o r:tr s : o +
mentarily preserved murals at
Santa Cecilia, Rome, by Cavallini,
and Santa Croce, Florence, by
Orcagna. The one at San
Gimignano of about 1413, often
attributed to Taddeo di Bartolo,
follows Nardos design in general.
Some variants in it will be noted.
4. Text in Belcari, 11924. It
was reported in 1472 that this play
was performed annually (Newbe-
gin, 30).
5. OMalley, 68. Coulton, 39,
reports a quite similar list required
as the topics for sermons in Eng-
land around 1300.
6. Gilbert 1992, 24.
10. Andreani, 431, doc. 179.
11. Andreani, 431, doc. 181.
12. Andreani, 433, doc. 211.
13. Andreani, 431, doc. 181.
14. Canuti, 2:239, on Chigi;
and 2:20836, on Isabella.
15. Andreani, 431, doc. 183.
16. Andreani, 433, doc. 205.
The existence of this letter is
known only from the record of the
messengers fee.
17. Fumi, Duomo, 396.
18. Andreani, 431, doc. 181.
19. A Florentine patron of this
time lists works in his collection
identified by artists name only
(Gilbert 1988, 13435). Three let-
ters in 1480 allude to damage in a
room in the ducal palace of Man-
tua identified only as la sala del
Pisanello. In the 1960s this clue
led to the rediscovery there of
Pisanellos frescoes, a spectacular
find that was slow in coming
because no one knew the room
was there; see Paccaganini.
20. Perali, 12023, also for the
events discussed below. Sansovino,
5865, is helpful on the family.
21. Perali, 128. On the abbey,
see, further, Fiocca and Libera.
22. Perali, 128.
23. Monaldeschi, 137v. Mon-
aldeschi is notoriously unreliable,
and Perali, who is sounder, makes
the pope the godfather of Gentile
himself, not of his son (128). How-
ever, the pope (b. 1417) was of the
same age-group as Gentile (co-
ruler from 1437) and probably
younger, so this time Monalde-
schis version is preferable.
24. Among these reasons is the
problem that the tomb was created
by two second-rank sculptors
whose work is difficult to distin-
guish and the fact that it has been
cut in pieces, some of which were
taken to the Louvre and the
remainder of which are in the
grottoes below Saint Peters, a site
that is not conducive to easy
examination. Surveys of sculpture
of the period, and a recent mono-
graph on the sculptor Giovanni
Dalmata, almost pass over the
lunette, the tombs largest element.
The one full presentation remains
Gnoli, 175despite a remark in
1908 (De Nicola, 338) that the
tomb is the most grandiose work
of fifteenth-century sculpture in
Rome.
25. The connection is all the
more likely in that the popes
nephew, Cardinal Marco Barbo,
who commissioned the tomb, also
held the same abbacy near Orvieto
(Gualdo, 249).
26. Draper, 8285, is helpful on
the medals. Both show only the
central part of the Judgment
schema. The focus of the popes
medal is the Christ in a vast court
of assisting saints and angels, with
the symbols of the Passion. The
archbishops medal adds, and gives
primary attention to, the Raising
of the Dead. Much the same
applies to the tomb of Cardinal
Ammanati, an adopted member of
the Piccolomini clan (well repro-
duced in Courtauld . . . Archives,
figs. 2449).
27. Eubel, 2:260 and 3:323,
gives data on Bishop Giorgio and
also on his many coadjutors, dis-
cussed below. Pope Sixtuss breve
noted above, Chapter 1, note 75,
offers indulgences for the Feast of
Corpus Christi in Orvieto Cathe-
dral.
28. Litta 9: dispensa 147, 1866.
29. Monaldeschi, 15. Fumi
1877, 42, reports that the people
brought in when the bishop was
attacked were from Parma.
30. Uginet, 334, points out the
lack of kinship between the pope
and Cardinal Domenico della
Rovere.
31. Fumi, Duomo, 400, doc.
114. The cardinal asserts that he
has always shown affection for
Orvieto, which makes the city
council seem ungrateful if they
think of replacing Perugino with
anyone else, even if they must wait
until the master finishes the cardi-
nals job. It seems odd that these
remarks did not include mention
of any affection toward the bishop,
if the latter had indeed been one
of his own family.
32. Fumi 1877, 11, 19, 42, 45,
68.
33. Yriarte, 7376.
34. See Nasalli Rocca. The
fresco cycles that Farnese commis-
sioned later, while he was pope, to
xo+ r s +o r:tr s o : o ; + ; +
record the glorious history of his
family, both in Rome at Palazzo
Farnese and at their villa at
Caprarola, include events in the
life of Bishop Guido. One shows
him supervising the building of
Orvieto Cathedral (Cheney, 261).
35. Monaldeschi, 139r.
36. Perali, 170, dubs Pope Paul
domicello orvietano, which one
may render as petty Orvietan
lord.
37. Yriarte, 73, describes Far-
nese as long since canon at the
time of the visit. Fumi 1877 speaks
of him as having been arch-
priest, as does Piccolomini-
Adami, 295, adding that Farnese
later renounced the office in favor
of one Bernardino da Acquapen-
dente. Perali, 170, also refers to his
having been archpriest. None cites
a source, which would presumably
be in cathedral records, but
because such a nomination would
have been likely the reports are
quite believable.
38. Yriarte, 9394. This was
from May 28 to June 5, when the
pope was fleeing from French
invasion (Pastor, 5:47071).
39. Pastor, 6:92, describes
Cesares activities. Fumi 1877, 47,
says Farnese began to be rich in
1502.
40. Ricetti 1998, 87, says all of
Antonio da San Gallos work for
the cathedral in 153637projects
in the choir, pavement, and roof
were directly commissioned by
the pope, even though the
records of working detail all
involve the cathedral committee.
He notes that in 1537 the pope
gave the committee 300 scudi.
Under the preceding pope,
Clement VII, the work in the city
by papal architect Sangallo had
involved public works such as the
well of Saint Patrick, called of his
holiness (to be discussed below),
and not the cathedral.
41. Andreani, 43334, doc. 217.
42. Andreani, 433, doc. 214.
21820.
44. The three reports of April 5,
1499, are from a book used to
record such matters from 1484 to
1526. The administrators personal
notes were kept in another series
of books, one used from 1484 to
1500 and a new one from 1500 to
1522. The only records not kept in
those books were of disburse-
ments, in a file called Camer-
lenghi. All these are part of a series
almost interrupted from 1321
(Andreani, 416).
45. Crisostimo is known from
very small sums paid him per diem
for painting in the cathedral from
1493 to 1495 (Fumi, Duomo,
4024).
46. Corbara is a village some
twelve miles southeast of Orvieto.
At this period an Imperia da Cor-
bara, presumably a relative of this
count, married a Monaldeschi, son
of the Achille who will appear in
connection with the chapel.
47. Yriarte, 7576; Fumi 1877,
74, on the unanimous vote; Yri-
arte, 17, on the breve.
48. Gilbert 1996, 699704, gives
a full if succinct survey.
49. Lorenzos big fresco projects
were at his villas, at Poggio a
Caiano (by Filippino) and at
Ospedaletto (by the four painters
mentioned). Their virtually total
loss has left a skewed sense of his
patronage; it appears to have been
dominated by single paintings, and
the most famous ones cited, by
Botticelli, were not his property.
The significance of the omission of
Signorelli from the Ospedaletto
project is evoked by a memoran-
dum of the time, making that
work a base for recommending
artists (Gilbert 1988, 16162).
50. Francesco was assigned the
main wall narratives in this chapel,
in Sant Agostino, Siena, for the
Bichi family, and Signorelli was
assigned the monochrome lunettes
above (Francesco di Giorgio, nos.
9596). For its altarpiece, Francesco
did the main central figure in sculp-
ture, which presumably paid better,
and Signorelli did a background for
it, the side saints, and the predella.
Francesco seems to have let assis-
tants do much of the fresco work,
which suggests that he was busy
with more significant projects,
while Signorelli did his part person-
ally.
51. Filippino temporarily
dropped a fresco project in Flo-
rence, the Strozzi chapel, for one
in Rome. Besides a higher fee, this
may well have involved pressure
from the Medici in favor of the
patron of the work in Rome, an
important cardinal.
52. In such a scenario, the Bor-
gia would also have pressed the
Abbot at Monteoliveto to release
Signorelli. They certainly would
have had that power and behavioral
tendency. This hypothesis is not
something abstract. At other points
Alexander VI and Cardinal Giu-
liano della Rovere (see above,
Chapter 3, note 31) brought pres-
sure on the Orvietans to postpone
their claims on Perugino and Pin-
turicchio, thereby leaving them free
to work for these prelates (Fumi,
+ ; : xo+ r s +o r:tr s o ; ; o
Duomo, 400, doc. 114, of 1492;
402, doc. 127, of 1493).
Chapter 4
2. Fumi, Duomo, 23032, docs.
112, 120, 122, specify that payments
for two angels in a standard glass
window are ad rationem figurarum
et non ad rationem ystorie
that is, so much per angel and not
per window.
3. Andreani, 434, doc. 223. The
record of November 25 also
includes the slip of the pen (dis-
cussed in Chapter 2, note 31),
which states that he had already
been hired to finish the chapel.
4. Mancini, 134.
5. Michelangelo 1967, 7: non
riuscendo . . . el suo disegno.
7. Just before these designs, Sig-
norelli executed another low, wide
triangle, the one in the inner bay
with the symbols of the Passion
(Fig. 12, between the tall triangles
of the apostles and prophets).
Angelico had left a design for it,
which Signorelli evidently fol-
lowed. Angelico had recast the
image in a way that suited its spe-
cial shape. In earlier tradition, the
objects are seen in a widely spaced
pattern, and one angel held each.
Here the large symbols, cross and
column, themselves dominate the
center, and courts of angels on
either side support them. This
became a model for the subse-
quent low, wide triangles of the
outer bay, where the chief saints
replace the larger symbols, setting
up a return to the usual altarpiece
scheme.
8. Sciolla, 9091, discusses the
work briefly. Courtauld Institute
Illustration Archives, 2, part 2,
2449, provides a fine series of
detail photographs.
9. Abraham with souls in his
bosom appears in another quattro-
canto Last Judgment, the fresco at
Loreto Aprutino of about 1425.
This work, unusual in many ways,
will be discussed below.
10. They are here cited from
Breviarium, 15657, with the head-
ing Litaniae Sanctorum.
11. Missals print the Kyrie Elei-
son in full in the text for Holy Sat-
urday. Saint Joseph, not present in
1518, appears among the prophets
in 1846.
12. Article Mourants in
Migne 1846, 15:715. This article
also prints the Kyrie.
13. Bernard, 3:388; Breviarium
Romanum, Regensburg, 1901, Pars
Aestiva, 798. A minutely complex
woodcut labeled the figure of
eternal life, whose upper part is
identical with standard Last Judg-
ment images, appears in a Floren-
tine booklet of 1494 (followed by
several reprints). A thorough text
accompanies it, and tells us that the
assisting saints, indistinguishable in
the tiny image, are the saints,
patriarchs, prophets, apostles, mar-
tyrs, virgins and confessors, and
innumerable others. The list
matches the vaults precisely. The
iconographic literature seems not to
have noted this very rare instance
of an image supplied with a full text
to explain it (accessible in Rosen-
wald, 5051, 5657). This set of
saints was evidently quite common-
place, but that is not so for art his-
torians in modern culture. By a
familiar syndrome, a difficulty
encountered in understanding a
detail can, when solved, generate
conviction that it is a central factor
in the imagery. It seems more likely
that it is a marginal one.
14. Andreani, 435, doc. 226. An
argument has been made that the
right-hand wall was painted first,
on the basis of a line in this docu-
ment: Imprimis, that he is obli-
gated to paint the whole chapel on
the right side. Such a clue to the
internal chronology would be
enticing but surprising, because
contracts do not specify in what
order parts of a job are to be done.
By this reasoning, the artist would
presumably have been directed to
do next the parts named next, after
imprimis, but those are the win-
dow embrasures and the small
internal chapel, an unlikely leap in
the former case. What negates the
argument is the following clause
directing him to paint the three
walls, the two on the sides and the
altar wall, although (if the argu-
ment was right) one of those had
been done already. The first line
quoted calls, rather, for painting
the whole chapel on the right side
of the church. Imprimis signals
that this first clause of general
import is followed by the others
breaking the work into details; as
in other documents in this archive,
the time value of first relates to
the parts of the contract, not the
sequence of painting. Then, in the
first of clauses specifying details, the
contract seeks to ensure that the
work includes elements that might
not strictly be in the chapel: the
embrasures and the small chapel;
the third clause calls for painting all
the chapel walls. This is a normal
legal document, without the kind
of reference that would be so
much more interesting to us. It
xo+ r s +o r:tr s ; + ; + ;
certainly could be objected that a
previous paragraph in this docu-
ment mentions the chapel as on
the left side of the church. One
should indeed expect consistency
within the same document, even
though it is known that in
churches left and right were
ambiguous, depending on the
viewpointfrom the altar for the
clergy, but from the door for the
public. However, this text switches
between two languages, and the
location of the chapel is at the left
in the Latin section, and at the
right in the Italian part. The Latin
part consists of the minutes of the
committee meeting, which then
incorporated a full copy of the
contract in Italian that had previ-
ously been given to the artist. Thus
there are two documents, with dif-
ferent contexts. I am indebted to
Dario Covi for discussing these
points.
15. The word elevando has
sometimes been read to mean that
the statue was to be removed, but
it can also mean lifted up. The
meaning lifted in this case is cer-
tain because of the second docu-
ment that pays a master two and a
half lire for the procedure
(Andreani, 436, doc. 237). A mas-
ter is too skilled a person to be
brought in merely for removal,
and the fee is much too high for
such a task. Dismantling an entire
scaffolding cost less than one lira at
the time (doc. 238). The lifting
presumably required building a
new base.
16. The only records of pay-
ment to Signorelli under his sec-
ond contractthe one for the
whole chapelare, with one
exception, in the administrators
annual summary reports, usually
submitted in June when their terms
ended (Andreani, 43638, docs.
233, 246, 247, 253, 263). They
show the total paid him in the year
then ending, noted in some cases as
having been in installments. The
exception is the final payment for
the balance due (residuum) on
December 5, 1504, so the work
had been finished, but how much
earlier? The committee could be a
slow payer; it finished paying for
the vaults, done under the first
contract, only after the second
contract had been signed. One
must give up hope of being able to
deduce exactly when the artist
moved from scene to scene. The
contract contains provisions to pay
him as he proceeded, but such pay-
ments, if made, are not in this
record. For the date of completion,
the best evidence is the dunning
letter to the town council of April
14, 1504, from the Duke of
Urbino (Andreani, 438, doc. 254),
urging that Signorelli be paid for
the balance of the work done
(resto dellopera fatta). If we may
assume Signorelli had tried milder
appeals before turning to this pow-
erful figure in Rome, and that the
latter arrangement took some
working out, we are taken back at
least to February, and thence to the
cold season, when fresco work was
not usually done. (The first con-
tract provided for work in the
summer and as long as can be
painted; Andreani, 434, doc. 220.)
Thus, completion would have
been in autumn 1503. It has been
argued, on the other side, that the
duke was seeking payment only for
what had already been done,
which need not have been the
whole. However, a plea to pay an
installment due while work was
ongoing does not seem to match
the term balance (resto, the
remainder). Further, in June 1504
Signorelli did a quite separate job
for the committee, to be discussed
below, and in December 1504 he
received the small fee of 19 florins
in somenot fully clearconnec-
tion with it, just when he was also
at last getting his final pay for the
chapel (Andreani, 438, doc. 257bis,
262). It would seem normal for
him to have taken on this other job
when the main one had been com-
pleted and payment was being
awaited. It would seem less so if
the larger job was still in process,
for then completion of the latter
would be further put off, along
with the bigger fee for it.
17. Bertorello, in Testa 1996,
331, 333, urges caution on many
points because of the limited evi-
dence, but he is firm that the
Blessed scene was done before the
Antichrist scene.
18. This central window was
built only in 1447, simultaneous
with the project for Angelicos
work (Andreani, 424, doc. 36).
Quite likely the thought was to
make the painting more visible
(Davanzo and Marchetti, in Testa
1996, 28). The position of the
Blessing Christ makes clear that
Angelico was taking the window
into account in his plan.
19. Testa 1996, 44.
20. The recent restoration has
had its most splendid result in a
newly recovered figure in this
area, exactly in the center of the
wall. The proposal to call the fig-
ure Cain goes too far and, in my
opinion, lacks any firm basis. A
+ ; xo+ r s +o r:tr s ; - ; o
damned soul is seen biting its own
hand, and another figure may be
standing over it. The very same
formulation is found twice among
the damned at Josaphat, where fig-
ures are caught in the flames. This
new figure would be another of
the same category. The diagonal
division on the altar wall was
noted above, between the rising
saved and the descending damned.
The rise begins narrowly at the
base and widens toward Christ,
thus including both the bishop
saints in the central window
embrasures. The descending
damned take wider space toward
the bottom, extending at the base
beyond the center toward our left.
The new figure is in that area, and
for that reason too seems to be one
of the army of the damned.
21. Andreani, 424, doc. 35; 426,
doc. 68.
22. The Book of Enoch is avail-
able in English translations in
Charles 1913 (these lines at pp.
21112), the standard edition, and
more accessibly in Reddish, 168.
Charles (1912, ix) reports its disap-
pearance until the eighteenth cen-
tury, and the shift to the name
Uriel; he judges its importance in
the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th
edition, article Enoch. Lapide
1621, 958, cites the Mass naming
the four angels, and Hamilton, 35,
speaks of Picos interest. Sig-
norellis three standard angels do
not follow Enochs descriptions of
them at all; the presumption
would be that he made use of the
text only for the new figure that
lacked any established type.
23. Bynum, 255. Saint
Ambrose, who is pictured in the
vault above, said everyone should
enter heaven without clothing, as
a token of virtuous purity (Migne
185766, 14:522).
24. Mariani Canova, Ms. 3,
6967, fig. Ms. 3c.
25. Harthan, plate 147. This
miniature is also tiny, on a page 4
3/8 by 3 inches. See also Chapter
2, note 66.
26. Tolnay, fig. 274. This 15-
inch-high woodcut is exception-
ally ambitious, and it was
circulated in several states. Because
of this, and because it is Italian and
multiple, Signorelli could well
have known it. The loincloths of
the nudes are treated much like
his. Yet its uncertain date may
mean that it follows Signorelli,
whose Orvieto mural cycle
inspired other artists, as will be dis-
cussed.
27. Yriarte, 74; Paschini, 18, 43;
Perali, 129.
28. In anticipation of his own
death in 1996, Cardinal Bernardin
of Chicago discussed the world to
come in an interview. Asked
whether he thought he would be
reunited with friends, he replied:
I do. Ive always believed that,
and that is part of our tradition
(New York Times Magazine,
December 1, 1996, 114).
29. McDannell and Lang, 60,
64, 124, 132, 144.
30. Zeri, 2021, proposes the
identifications as Augustine and his
mother. His bibliography includes
that of the other version in Siena.
31. A clue to the background of
Giovannis unusual motif can per-
haps be seen in nearby San
Gimignano, where Enoch and Eli-
jah play a similar role in the Last
Judgment of circa 1413, men-
tioned at various points. However,
in other respects the San
Gimignano fresco is standard.
32. The flames at the corner
make it clear that hell is the next
stage after what we see here; the
souls are driven toward the flames.
Yet this scene is popularly labeled
Hell, evidently because Sig-
norelli never shows hell itself, con-
trary to our expectations, and
because this scene is so violent.
33. Meiss, 176, makes the com-
parison and discusses Tundal.
34. Bober and Rubinstein, 144.
35. Bober and Rubinstein, 188;
Draper, 13345.
36. In this area of study, it is a
curiosity that Signorellis frescoes
are often said to represent the
Apocalypse and related literature,
usually in popular contexts. Thus a
reviewer in passing alludes to the
frescoes through which Signorelli
had expressed the deeds of
Antichrist, extrapolating from
one segment to the whole cycle
(Ateneo Veneto, 32 [1994], 181),
and a bookseller promotes an illus-
trated book on the cycle by saying
that it is based on the book of
Revelation. Revelation in fact
only glances briefly at the end of
the world and the Last Judgment
(20:1213), contrary to the general
perception. The Gospel of
Matthew and the First Letter to
the Corinthians are the basis for
ideas about the Last Judgment, in
the standard tradition used by Sig-
norelli. The Apocalypse follows its
account of the destruction of
satanic power by peace in the
world, not by the end of the
world. The blurred impression
seems to be based in part on
phrases repeated from Matthew in
Revelation (6:1213), partly on the
xo+ r s +o r:tr s ; o , + ;
story of the preaching of Antichrist
(not in Revelation at all but indi-
rectly linked to it) and partly on
the excited stress seen in Sig-
norelli, which is easy to associate
with any fascination over end
times.
37. Weinstein, 88104.
38. Supino 1938, 1:18084.
Frati, 21416, publishes the
instructions in full. Later in
Bologna, in 1490, Costas Triumph
of Death can be linked to this for-
mula.
39. Well reproduced by
Cavendish. It is not really surprising
that this author labels the image a
Last Judgment.
40. Clark, 22. In Florence in
1499 Fra Bartolommeo was com-
missioned to fresco a Last Judg-
ment with donor portraits over a
tomb in a cemetery and to base it
on Luke 21:2533, the gospel
read on the first Sunday in
Advent (Borgo, 478). These
verses, about the five signs preced-
ing the Judgment, are discussed in
the next chapter.
41. Harthan, 29.
42. Andreani, 435, doc. 226.
43. Dacos, in Testa 1996,
22331.
44. A little-noted row of
notable clerics fills the lower
frames of frescoes of the Lorenzetti
school, circa 1339, at Santa Maria
dei Servi, Siena. See Kaftal, cols.
144, 417, 536, 796, 837, 848. Still
earlier, about 1250, in a chapel in
Santi Quattro Coronati, Rome, a
row of prophets heads in circular
frames runs under an abbreviated
Last Judgment fresco (Paeseler,
363, fig. 297).
45. Some have thought that the
puzzle of the presence of Giotto,
Dante, and Petrarch in Gozzolis
row of heads might be explained
through Dantes being a member
of the third order of Saint Francis.
This account is first recorded,
faintly, in the later fifteenth cen-
tury (Moorman, 22324). It could
not apply to Petrarch, who was in
clerical orders.
46. Andreani, 445, docs. 384
and 386, on the benches installed
in 1740; doc. 362, on the new altar
in 1715; Barroero, n. 35, on the
tomb of 1717.
47. Fumi, Duomo, 377, reports
the removal in 1845. Luzi, 16794,
reasonably began with the firm
identity of Dante and the status of
other laureled figures as poets.
Seeking to identify them, he
turned to Dantes list of the four
greatest poets in Inferno 4 and
assigned those names and Virgils
to five portraits on the wainscots,
in most cases with no explanation
of how he decided which portrait
got which name. This left him shy
one name for the seventh and last
portrait still visible in his time (he
disregarded the two already
destroyed). Having left the one on
the entrance wall unassigned, Luzi
called this figure Empedocles,
because among a list of twenty
more good poets in the same pas-
sage in Dante, Empedocles was the
one who expected the world to
return to chaos, the situation
shown above this head. Luzi was
certainly affected by the intense
Dante revival of the Risorgimento,
to find in his verses all kinds of
answers. Some have suggested that
an oral tradition was behind Luzis
identifications, but the invisibility
of the heads for an entire century,
up to 1845, and his own statement
that the names are my conjec-
ture (167), makes that most
unlikely. His identifications
remained unchecked and nearly
unchallenged for almost a century,
partly because no other names
were conspicuously offered with
better evidence, and partly because
it was handy to have any names at
all.
48. The first person to describe
the chapelClementini, in 1714
had already realized that this was
Virgil (457), and so did Perali
(153), rejecting the usual label as
Horace, but they were overlooked.
Several others since have also made
the same correct inference inde-
pendently and are sometimes cred-
ited as its discoverers.
49. It was again Clementini in
1714 who first named Claudian
(457).
50. This material, previously
scattered in many publications, has
been well assembled by Donato,
2742.
51. Castelli, 219.
52. Testa 1996, 44, for the first
time presents a drawing that clari-
fies the original layout on the altar
wall.
53. Gerolamo Curzio Clemen-
tini (16581716, resident in Orvi-
eto from 1680) has already been
mentioned for details from his
text.
54. In Chapter 2, notes 61 and
62 and related text.
55. Freyhan, 68.
56. The imagery of vices is far
less stable in tradition than that of
virtues. Envy is involved with bit-
ing and being bitten in Ripa,
36061, who generally is a com-
piler of earlier motifs. For Envy to
bite her own hand as here may be
+ ; o xo+ r s +o r:tr s , + o +
a condensed form of such variables.
Envy is made to be the opposite of
Charity by Giotto in 1305, in the
Arena Chapel, as well as by Dante,
and later in a set of engravings of
1499 reproduced by Mle 1922,
339.
57. See the corpus of Dante
illustrations in Brieger et al., 2
(Illustrations): 34851.
58. Clementini, in Testa 1996,
458.
59. This culture never seems to
show Faith without a chalice, or
any other figure with one. Her
laurel here seems unique. In this
wainscot the many laurels always
indicate poets (including those
worn by Virgil in the adjacent
monochromes of Purgatorio). It is
possible that Faith gets the laurel
here because she appears as a
singer in her only appearance in
the Divine Comedy (Purgatorio
29.128). The two other virtues also
sing there, but Signorellis images
of them are tied to their other,
nonsinging appearances.
60. Gilbert 1986, 10924.
61. The fact that Signorelli
shows Charity with a correspon-
ding vice, but none with Hope or
Faith, matches the way they are
treated in the text of the Comedy.
This suggests close attention by the
planner here along the lines pro-
posed above.
62. An example in the National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.,
is reproduced in Studies in the His-
tory of Art 22 (1989), 185.
63. The ermine on a banner is
especially common in illustrations
of the Triumph of Chastity, the
first of Petrarchs Triumphs.
64. Clementini, in Testa 1996,
457. Boccaccios Genealogy of the
Gods, the standard source for clas-
sical myth in Signorellis time, on
an opening page (6r) quotes Statius
(Thebaid 4.50317) apropos
descents to the underworld.
65. Andreani, 457 n. 16, points
out the error and its correction.
Perhaps it arose if the writer,
aware that Statius had reported on
the underworld somewhere in his
poem, did not have access to a
copy of the poem. Asking for
help, he might have obtained a
wrong citation, perhaps because
his request had been too vague,
and elicited an answer not related
to his specific concern with the
poets vision of combat. This
would explain his similar, puzzling
error of identifying the Salutati
portrait as of Roberto de Bardi,
never accepted thereafter. Bardi
was a minor scholastic professor
whose collection of Augustines
sermons was his sole work. The
one biography of him, twenty
lines in Filippo Villanis group
biography of Florentines, circa
1395, is repeated by Clementini
here almost verbatim, and Landino
had also repeated it in the intro-
duction to his commentary on
Dantes Divine Comedy (Testa and
Davanzo, in Testa 1996, 41).
Clementini was not familiar with
Dante, as evidenced by his failure
to recognize any of the Purgatorio
scenes, so his source was presum-
ably Villani. Villanis account of
Florentine poets (also including
Dante and Claudian, discussed ear-
lier) was unpublished in Clemen-
tinis time but may have been
gaining attention, as it was printed
not long afterward. The remark-
able coincidence is that Villanis
material on Bardi immediately fol-
lows the longer biography of
Coluccio Salutati on the very same
page. The unique and unconvinc-
ing proposal that Bardi was the
subject of the portrait is more
acceptable if it could be a slip for
the nearby Salutatithe correct
name, whose proximity cannot be
an accident. Clementini might
have provided the person helping
him with the page number. That
would be a reasonable explanation
for the emergence of Bardi. In this
case, it would follow that Salutatis
identity would still have been in
memory in 1700, yet the peculiar
emergence of Bardi might still
seem unlikely even with this
explanation, if not for its consis-
tency with the nearby mistaken
choice of a Statius text.
66. Chastel, 275.
67. Lisner, 308. In other cases
the centaurs defeated by Hercules
are interpreted as tyranny, and Lust
defeated by him is symbolized by
the hydra.
68. Lisner, 299344. The early
lives of Michelangelo consistently
report this anecdote, of Polizianos
guidance in proposing and
explaining the story of the lustful
centaurs being defeated. It is a
rare, clear case of a humanist pro-
viding an artist with a text for a
work that has a moral charge. (The
fact that the artist was very young
may have played a part in this hap-
pening.) The Orvieto wainscots
suggest a similar circumstance. The
ambiguity about the specific theme
of the Michelangelo relief does not
need to be discussed here.
69. Pollaiuolos engraving of
the Battle of Ten Nudes and other
instances were mentioned earlier.
An appropriate example is one that
xo+ r s +o r:tr s + o : + o ; + ; ;
is exceptionally classical in style
among the relief sculptures of the
fourteenth century on the faade
of Orvieto Cathedral. This is Cain
killing Abel where both are nude,
although both are clothed in the
adjacent scene of their sacrifice.
The change can be explained only
by the fact that a fight scene calls
for nudity.
70. Apollodorus, Bibliotheke,
2.7.23; Plutarch, Roman Ques-
tions, 90.
71. When Clementini reported
this vertical set of three mono-
chromes, he correctly noted that
Hercules was the hero of the top
one. For the bottom one, he also
offered an identity with a Hercules
storywrongly, as will soon
appear. (As this idea of his emerged
only when his text was published in
1996, it could not usefully influence
previous writers opinions about
the middle story.) It was therefore
natural in him to be sure the mid-
dle story concerned Hercules too,
even though the usual sources
failed to offer any such possibility.
Searching further, Clementini
would find the obscure Oionos
story, derived from Apollodorus, in
the mythological handbook of Car-
tari, which had been widely circu-
lated but published only in 1555,
long after the Orvieto work. By a
normal pattern, his difficulty in
finding any title would all the more
persuade him that the only one he
did find was correct, regardless of
its weak match, once he was certain
that this must be a Hercules story.
72. The romance exists in two
versions: in French by Benit de
Saint Maure and in Italian by
Guido delle Colonne. Illustrated
manuscripts of the former show
this episode, as I am kindly
informed by Dr. Imogene De
Smet, citing Vatican Regina Latina
1501.
73. Biagi, 1:150.
74. In this case the other two
male sinners briefly named by
Dante in the circle of lust, Paris
and Tristan, would presumably be
the two men shown tortured by
devils, along with one woman, in
the topmost monochrome of this
group, discussed earlier. It is strik-
ing that Signorelli thus seems to
account for all three male lustful
sinners named by Dante, but only
one of the five women (again apart
from the separate treatment of
Paolo and Francesca). It may be,
however, that in an early plan
another theme for this rectangular
monochrome was considered,
with the story of one of the five
women, Dido, rather than
Achilles. Dante condemns her
(5.6162) as the one who killed
herself for love, and broke faith
with the ashes of her late hus-
band, in this way departing from
the usual positive view of her. A
splendid drawing by Signorelli
(Uffizi 130 F) shows a woman col-
lapsing after stabbing herself,
assisted by two other grieving
women. The literature invariably
identifies this as the death of
Lucretia, who, however, was
always shown assisted by men,
consistent with the literary sources
(see Chapter 5). When Dido kills
herself, on the other hand, her
handmaids see her fallen on the
weapon (Aeneid 4.66263). The
drawing differs from that descrip-
tion only in that she falls away
from the cut. Dido, like Achilles,
let lust overcome reason. The
verso of this drawing is always
called Apollo Playing a violin, but
an identity as Orpheus would be
equally reasonable. If so, this
would recall how he is seen play-
ing on the adjacent wainscot in
Orvieto.
75. Colonne, 429. The strange
central motif of the victims mouth
pried open, in Signorellis mono-
chrome, recurs in a woodcut of
1510 by Hans Burgkmair, of
Death Killing a Lover.
76. Clementini, 457.
77. See note 71.
78. Lee, 30219. The author
credits earlier scholarship on the
literary use of the motif.
79. Liebeschutz; Lisner, fig. 23,
reproduces this illustration more
accessibly. The provenance of the
manuscript, as is common, is not
known.
80. More may have been
planned at an early stage. Vivid
evidence is a Signorelli drawing in
London (Popham and Pouncey,
cat. 241, plate cciv) showing the
scene from Inferno 28, Count
Ugolino, who ate his sons. The
verso shows a circle filled with
rough figures, matching the
unusual framing scheme of the
monochromes. Nardos fresco
cycle is the only Last Judgment
that includes a complete survey of
Dantes Inferno, and it has a differ-
ent organization. Using the
Ugolino scene in the Orvieto
wainscot would have involved a
design so different that it does not
seem possible even to speculate
about it. It is possible, although
unlikely, that the Ugolino drawing
is not related to Orvieto.
81. The idea of Pegasus as sym-
bol of poetry, which is common
+ ; xo+ r s +o r:tr s + o - + + +
today, has been said to have been
worked out first in 1495, in the
Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo (see
article Pegasus, Encyclopedia Bri-
tannica, 1909), but efforts to find it
in that text have not succeeded.
This might have stimulated Sig-
norellis unusual inclusion of the
horse in his monochrome, which
concerns a poetic story of virtue.
82. Entry Landino, Enciclope-
dia dantesca, 1971, 2:56668.
83. Trinkaus, 2:71314.
84. Divina Commedia, ed.
Landino, fol. 55v. Lisner, 310,
called attention to this passage,
omitted from the condensed ver-
sion of Landinos text in Biagis
standard publication of Dante
commentaries.
85. Furthermore, the proposal
about the bishop does not note the
exclusion of bishops over the cen-
turies from decisions about work
in the cathedral, or this bishops
exile. The label offered for Alberi,
the leading humanist in Orvieto,
seems to be without basis on two
counts. He did not live in the
town, and there is not anything to
show he was a humanist, although
some friends of his were. His
library, to judge from the portraits
in it (Gilbert, in Testa 1996,
30720), included oratory and
poetry but also civil and canon law
(the area of his education), gram-
mar, astronomy, and medicine. In
terms of the categories offered by
Petrucci, 20918, in his standard
study of reading in the period, this
library was of the scholastic
rather than the humanist kind.
To call him a humanist may only
reflect a casual use of the term for
bookish people of this era. On
Alberi, see, further, Fagliari Zeni
Buchicchio, in Testa 1996,
46066.
86. Fumi, editors note in Tom-
maso di Silvestro, 23 n. 4. On Lae-
tus, see Jacks.
87. Panvinius, 367. This life first
appeared in 1551 as part of a sup-
plement to Platinas lives of earlier
popes.
88. Pesenti, 291.
89. Frugoni, passim.
90. Fumi, Orvieto, 69.
91. Fabroni, 1:191, 2:37677.
93. Vasari 1878, 3:689.
94. Kury, 349.
95. Mancini, 67.
96. Kury, 348, 351.
97. Chastel, 230, reasonably
calls the Pan the most complete
visual realization of the ties
between the Medici and their
Neo-Platonist philosopher Ficino.
Its specific iconography has most
recently been explored by Gilbert
2000. It seems suitable to under-
line that Lorenzo, contrary to pop-
ular tradition, did not give many
commissions to painters and that
the famous Botticelli mythologies
belonged to his cousins. His major
patronage was for frescoes in his
country villas at Ospedaletto (now
lost) and Poggio a Caiano (begun
only at his death). These would be
not so conspicuous to a visitor like
Farnese.
98. (A) One is in the De Cardi-
nalatu of Paolo Cortesi, the writer
already mentioned (above, in text
related to note 92) as a correspon-
dent of the young Farnese and as
having taken a Farnese villa as the
setting for a dialogue. When
Cortesi wrote the later book, he
inevitably would have had Cardi-
nal Farnese in mind as much as
any other cardinal, and perhaps
more. The book hardly mentions
artists, so when Signorellis name
comes up it seems forced. While
speaking of the rule against work-
ing on Sunday, Cortesi suggests
that a pope might make an
exemption to that rule if Signorelli
was commissioned, and then he
praises the artist (Weil-Garris and
DAmico, 39). This mention of
Signorelli, shoe-horned into the
text, was surely designed to get the
artist some work at a time when
he had little. There is no known
or presumed link between Cortesi
and Signorelli, but Cortesis sur-
prising and unsolicited mention of
the artists skill would be under-
standable if it reflected similar con-
cern by an old friend like Farnese.
This seems to be the only available
explanation, even if it is only spec-
ulative, for the allusion to the
artist.
The other case is more direct:
(B) A letter of 1585 from the Far-
nese familys librarian, Orsini,
responds to an inquiry seeking
portraits of the Greek scholar
Gaza. Orsini recalls, under this
stimulus, how one of Paul IIIs
grandsons, Cardinal SantAngelo,
spoke of his grandfathers having
shown him in the Sistine Chapel
one of those big paintings by the
hand of il Cortonethat is, Sig-
norelli (Nolhac, 11). The incident
would have occurred about
154550, to judge from Pauls life
dates and SantAngelos title. What
is remarkable is Pauls
citing the artist by name sixty years
after the fact, when that work of
his was no longer much remem-
bered; he must have had a particu-
lar interest in Signorelli, thus
xo+ r s +o r:tr s + + + - + + + ; ,
reinforcing the suggestion about
(A) above. Memory of Signorellis
Sistine fresco at that time may also
be evidenced in a borrowing of a
motif from it by Bronzino in a
work of 154142 (Cox-Rearick,
60).
99. This general cultural pattern,
making epic poetry serve Christian-
ity even if pagan, is exemplified in a
little book printed at least seven
times between 1490 and 1500 but
hardly noted in recent study. That
book, the Opusculum perelegans of
Antonio Mancinelli (14521506),
consists solely of quoted passages
from Cicero, Juvenal, Ovid, Virgil,
and others less often cited, all pre-
sented as evidence that the writers
were arguing in favor of such doc-
trines as One God, the Virgin
Birth, and numerous other Christ-
ian articles of faith.
100. The standard Last Judg-
ments do not refer to purgatory at
all, for the good theological reason
that it must cease to exist on Judg-
ment Day, when all souls are either
definitely saved or damned. The
standard composition of the scene
had also gained a fixed form before
the theory of purgatory became
popular about 1200. The literature
thus, reasonably, does not note its
absence, but that may have had a
disadvantage in that no one has
noted the oddity of its appearance
in the Orvieto version. It is to be
included as part of the general odd-
ity of the wainscot poetry: the
introduction of outside reports
about the underworld. Separately,
quite varied visual treatments of
purgatory not hitherto assembled
appear in this general period in
Umbria, more, apparently, than
elsewhere. A recently discovered
fresco of about 1345 in the
monastery of San Francesco a
Borgo Nuovo, Todi, is inscribed as
an image of Saint Patricks purga-
tory, the medieval account of the
place that was most popular before
Dantes (Polzer, 264). It shows
access downward through a well,
while, at the bottom, pits subdivide
purgatory by types of sin. This
structure is more like Dantes hell
than like his purgatory, which is a
mountain to be climbed. Quite
nearby in Terni, a three-wall Last
Judgment of 144551 with Christ
on the altar wall shows hell and
purgatory on the side walls (most
accessibly reproduced by Riess,
Antichrist, figs. 3537). The choice
of theme was surely dominated by
the patrons family name, Paradisi.
(The best known analogous case of
a theme chosen because of a
patrons name is in Piero di
Cosimos work for the family called
Vespucci, wasps.) The idea offered
that the Terni cycle influenced Sig-
norelli failed to take note that the
Terni purgatory is also Saint
Patricks, very different from
Dantes. In Orvieto itself a new
water supply system of the 1520s
with a very deep well was and is
still called Saint Patricks Well.
Local historians have until quite
recently been baffled by the name,
an indication that this tradition had
been entirely lost. Michelangelos
Last Judgment, much influenced by
Signorellis, again omits purgatory
(as it does all the earlier artists
wainscot imagery), and so do all
later representations of the subject.
Chapter 5
3. Fairweather, 9899 n. 15,
with previous literature.
4. Derolez, 203.
6. A visual precedent to some
degree appears in the Blessed seg-
ment of the Last Judgment at the
Cathedral of Chartres, at the far
left.
7. Augustine (City of God, book
20), in general the prime text for
details of the Last Judgment, fol-
lowing the Gospels few words,
provides the neatest such text. As
part of his concern to show that
the Old and New Testaments are
consistent on the matter, he first
quotes (chapter 23) from the
prophet Daniel (12:2): Many that
sleep in the dust of the earth shall
awake, some to everlasting life and
some to shame and everlasting
contempt. Then he quotes from
the Gospel of John (5:28): The
hour is coming, in which all that
are in the graves shall hear his
voice and shall come forth, they
that have done good unto the res-
urrection of life, and they that
have done evil unto the resurrec-
tion of damnation. The latter text
with graves was dominant, no
doubt supported by Augustines
citation at the beginning of his
survey from Isaiah 26:10 (in
Augustines chapter 21): The
dead shall rise again, and they shall
arise again that were in their
graves. On the other hand, a
famous verse from Job (19:25),
My redeemer liveth, and on the
last day I am to arise out of the
earth, was cited, for instance, in
Otto of Freisings On the Two
Cities, a major discussion of this
topic (cited by Bynum, 184).
+ o xo+ r s +o r:tr s + + + : +
8. Both the examples encoun-
tered are in very famous works,
thus more likely than most to be
accessibly reproduced in all their
parts. Hence the existence of oth-
ers is likely. (A) The Pericope of
Emperor Henry II, 10001004,
shows the dead summoned from
graves, wearing clothes, with trum-
peting angels, on folio 201v, and
the standard Judgment on folio
202r. The left-right arrangement,
matching the time sequence, is
reproduced by Boase, 24. (B) The
Klosterneuburg altarpiece, 1181. its
fifty-one panels form three hori-
zontal series of seventeen each. Of
the resulting seventeen vertical sets
of three each, the first fifteen each
show a Gospel scene in the middle
with Old Testament scenes above
and below it. Of the other two
sets, the last of all shows the Judg-
ment between heaven above and
hell below. The penultimate
shows, from the top down, Christs
second coming, four trumpeting
angels, and the naked dead rising
from graves. This rarely noted
scene is reproduced by Belli
Barsali, fig. 5. The six scenes are a
suggestive precedent for Signorelli
in thoughtfully working out assign-
ments of phases of the theme to
framed sequences predetermined
by the architecture.
9. Both reproduced by
Longnon and Cazelles, nos. 29 and
30. The standard Last Judgment is
at the head of Psalm 95 and shows
the sorting of the naked saved and
damned. At the end of the psalm,
a miniature shows three naked
souls emerging from the earth
while, as Signorelli will also show,
two angels trumpet above. This
miniature has wrongly been said to
belong to the following Psalm 96,
but the text is not related, and the
spacing on the page also connects
it better with the preceding psalm.
10. Meiss, 23031, discusses the
two Adam miniatures and repro-
duces them as his figs. 558 and
655. He wrongly labels the minia-
ture of the Raising of the Dead as a
Last Judgment (also in the caption
to fig. 565), an indication of how
puzzling its isolation from the
main image seems. The fullest
account of the 1412 miniature is
by Sterling, 68, fig. 104.
11. The marked rarity of Last
Judgment images in all illuminated
manuscripts of this period, all the
more so in the arrangement here
observed, tends to support the
inference that Signorellis model
was in this particular context,
where it does appear. The most
popular type of illuminated manu-
script of this century, as is well
known, was the Book of Hours,
and its imagery shows great vari-
ety, yet a study of it (Harthan,
1419) does not mention that it
might include the Last Judgment,
even in a survey of the less com-
mon options. A helpful check is
provided by the catalogue of man-
uscripts of the Walters Art Gallery
(Randall), which indexes every
theme shown in its 112 Books of
Hourswhich are a large sample,
and a random one with respect to
this matter. Just ten include a Last
Judgment, which, however, never
accompanies Psalm 94, as it does in
the Trs Riches Heures, but either
the Penitential Psalms, Seven Last
Requests, or Office of the Dead.
In nine of these the Raising of the
Dead is included in the lower area
in the usual way, and the abbrevi-
ated tenth one omits it entirely. It
is also included in the usual way in
the two other Walters manuscripts
showing Last Judgments, a City of
God and the Breviary of 1412 dis-
cussed in the text. The separate
scene of the Raising in the Trs
Riches Heures thus seems most
exceptional, and the likeness to
Signorelli the more interesting.
12. Bynum, 187 nn. 100, 101.
Her survey of skeletons in this
scene omits Michelangelo, and one
must remain open to the emer-
gence of other earlier examples.
Misled perhaps by a poor repro-
duction in the source she cites, she
calls Ghisis engraving of 1554 a
painting. Nor is it the case that
Signorellis skeletons are not
naked but in the process of acquir-
ing flesh.
13. Condivi, 12223. The same
Ezekiel text had earlier been
reflected in images of the dead
raised, but not as skeletons, linked
to Christs resurrection, not to the
Last Judgment. They seem to dis-
appear after the twelfth century
(Schiller, 3:6668).
14. Testa, La cappellina, pres-
ents the newly rediscovered fresco
of 1468 and its documents, making
all previous discussions obsolete.
15. Fruscoloni, 17982.
16. Natalini, passim.
17. Andreani, 249, doc. 136.
18. Pastor, 6:596.
19. All the above in Stoyanov,
191, 196, 204.
20. Clementini, 456; he also
reports that the cult of Parenzo was
still active in the seventeenth cen-
tury, when the town named the
saint one of its official protectors.
21. In Filippino Lippis fresco of
Saint Thomas, in Rome, men-
xo+ r s +o r:tr s + : : + : + +
tioned earlier, the primary means
of identifying as such the heretics
the saint refutes is by showing
them throwing their books to the
ground. Earlier, in the Spanish
Chapel at Santa Maria Novella in
Florence, in 1365, in the scene of
the triumph of the church, one
such heretic tears his book.
22. Furentes armis haereticos
repraessit.
23. The tomb shows a bat-
winged devil dragging the heretic,
who holds his book (and sword),
to hell. This motif might explain a
Signorelli drawing in the Morgan
Library, New York, that is com-
monly said to relate to the Orvieto
project but does not match any-
thing specific in it (repr. Van
Cleave, 250, with discussion). It
shows four bat-winged demons,
one holding up a book and the
other three gazing at it. Because
the tomb shows a demon whose
captive has a book, one might pre-
sume for the drawing a moment
following, when the demon has
appropriated the evil book from
his captive and studies it. That
would be a variant of the Damned
scene. There are other cases of
drawings that seem to relate to
unused ideas for the chapel.
24. Kristeller 1913, 7475. Only
one copy of each edition survives.
That very high rate of loss makes it
reasonable to think that other edi-
tions have been totally lost.
25. Aichele, 3435; Bartholom-
maeis, 1:3552. The Antichrist sec-
tion begins (lines 136) with the
motifs shown by Signorelli: the sun
darkens, the moon is bloody,
Antichrist is believed, and the fire
comes from heaven. The Last Judg-
ment is also treated in the standard
way: tombs open, bones reassem-
ble, Christ on his throne shows the
symbols of the Passion, he sorts the
just and the unjust at right and left,
they enter heaven and hell.
26. Bisogni, passim.
27. McGinn, 148.
28. Copinger, 2:2, nos.
6380522. This saturation bears
emphasizing, because studies of the
culture of the period often fail to
consider whether a claimed source
was widely known. Thus one
recent writer on the chapel dis-
counted the Golden Legend, not
noting its print history, while
nearby arguing for another source
on the ground that it was printed
five times in the period, though
only once in Italy. (Single print-
ings, like last printings, may con-
note failure to circulate.)
29. McGinn, 144.
30. Still other cases link Enoch
and Elijah tightly to the Last Judg-
ment. The contract to paint a Last
Judgment in Florence in 1499, to
be executed by Fra Bartolommeo,
specifies that it shall include Enoch
and Elijah (Borgo, 478). As already
noted, the two witnesses had also
appeared in the San Gimignano
Last Judgment of around 1413.
These Last Judgments with the
two witnesses do not involve
Antichrist at all. Thus, the wit-
nesses appearance in Signorellis
Antichrist scene signals its attach-
ment to the Judgment.
31. Even the two extended
motifs cited above as not present
in the Golden Legends chapter on
advent are also not present in the
biography of Antichrist. In a letter
of September 15, 1537, to
Michelangelo, the literary man
Pietro Aretino urged him to make
the Antichrist a main figure in his
Last Judgment, but this idea had
no follow-up (Michelangelo,
4:1979, 83).
32. T. Henry, 755.
33. Sprenger, 34. The authors
of this famous book, the Malleus
Maleficarum, against witches, first
issued in 1486, debate this question
and decide that comets do foretell
deaths in the case of kings but not
in the case of other people. (They
allude elsewhere [152, 196] to
heretics whom they call Cathari
and Manicheans.)
34. T. Henry, 755.
35. T. Henry, 755. It has been
argued, against this, that the build-
ing is not structurally sound and
hence not Bramantesque. This
seems to ignore Bramantes repu-
tation for poor engineering, as
well as the intervention of a
painters ideas. Marchetti (in Testa
1996, 15560) argues that the
temple is structurally sound, asso-
ciating it with another architect,
Francesco di Giorgio.
36. Scarpellini, 42, fig. 52. Of
129 reproductions in this mono-
graph, this is one of just four not
of works by Signorelli.
37. An association between
John the Evangelist and Antichrist
was offered in 1450 by Saint
Antonino of Florence in his
Summa Theologica (4.13, chap. 4,
sec. 3). He notes that some early
writers say Antichrist killed the
Evangelist, as well as Enoch and
Elijah. The association might have
drawn Signorelli to Filippinos
image. The latters fresco cycle
includes a standard scene of Johns
martyrdom, not by Antichrist.
38. Goldner and Bambach, nos.
99101, date these drawings about
+ : xo+ r s +o r:tr s + : +
1500, even though they are far
removed from the final work in
poses and other ways. Signorellis
attention to the scene would then
be still later.
39. In giving Simon the status
of the first of the heresiarchs,
Augustine (De Haeresis, chap. 1) is
among many early Christian writ-
ers who so treat him. Lapide (in
his notes on Acts 8:9, p. 159) and
Stock assemble such comments.
40. In a throwaway line, sug-
gesting its commonness, Augustine
(City of God, 20:19) dubs heretics
as those whom the evangelist John
calls many Antichrists.
41. The second figure on the
tile is noticeably younger than Sig-
norelli, unlikely for the chamber-
lain. A plausible hypothesis is that
he is an assistant to Signorelli on
the project, perhaps the nephew
mentioned in 1510 (Andreani, 439,
doc. 269). Self-portraits with assist-
ing family members were included
in large projects by Ghiberti
(Doors of Paradise, Florence Bap-
tistery, with his son Vittorio) and
Ghirlandaio (altarpiece of the Hos-
pital of the Innocents, Florence).
The Maitani figure in the Last
Judgment on the Orvieto faade is
accompanied by others in this way.
In a later Last Judgment, in the
dome of Florence Cathedral, Fed-
erico Zuccari portrayed himself
with artist friends and associates in
the work. Zuccari studied Sig-
norellis work in Orvieto in
preparing his own. A self-portrait
on tile by Andrea del Sarto (Uffizi)
and another reported by Vasari
(1878, 6:546n) were produced in
informal situations.
42. See the preceding note and
Chapter 2, note 62. It is remark-
able that this long tradition is
overlooked in the large literature
on Michelangelos self-portrait in
his Last Judgment.
43. The shift in the two figures
of Angelico and Signorelli to mod-
ern costume, from the historical
costumes of everyone taking part
in the Antichrist scene, is prepared
by Maitani and his associates in the
Last Judgment, and by Ghirlandaio
and his family in the more recent
Florentine case cited above in note
41, as well as by the Sistine
onlookers also mentioned above.
44. Gilbert 1986, 10924.
45. Vasari (1878, 4:181) reports
a portrait of Angelico among the
blessed in Fra Bartolommeos Last
Judgment of 149899, finished by
Albertinelli in 15001501. Vasari is
unreliable in identifying portraits,
especially of artists, but need not
be wrong, and here there is an
argument that such a portrait may
have existed. Fra Bartolommeo,
also a Dominican painter, certainly
had a special feeling for Angelico.
46. Early examples are by
Melozzo (Masciotta, fig. 8) and by
Filippino Lippi, in the same scene
as his Simon Magus (Masciotta,
fig. 19).
47. Bambach (1999, 108) notes
that the Angelico head is based
on a pounced cartoon, unlike all
the others in the scene, and sug-
gests that the use of a prior likeness
might account for the difference.
Vasari names many other figures in
the Antichrist scene as portraits
(1878, 3:690), and these have often
been given more credence than
any evidence warrants. A likely
exception to their unreliability is
the name Cesare Borgia, assigned
to the last figure in the last row of
Antichrists listeners. It matches
fully a contemporary woodcut por-
trait of him (Cieri Via, 178, figs. on
p. 176) that may well derive from
Signorellis painting. This relation-
ship between these media is normal
for the period and is apparently
exemplified in the wainscot por-
trait below the Antichrist, to be
discussed below. The identity also
matches the historical situationin
a way much simpler than that
offered by its proponentin that
in 1502 Borgia was the effective
ruler of Orvieto.
48. Giottos rolling scroll, at the
very top of his Last Judgment, is
often not mentioned in accounts
of the work. The graphic vigor he
gives the motif marks a contrast
with the very slight involvement
in Signorelli of any motifs from
the Apocalypse.
49. The same viewers who
called the first man a sibyl identi-
fied the adjacent man in the turban
as David, giving no basis. Presum-
ably they imply a reference to the
hymn about the Last Judgment,
Dies Irae, where David and the
sibyl are named as its witnesses.
However, that specifically links
them to that day itself, not to the
preamble with the five signs seen
here. Further, the chapel shows
David elsewhere, among
Angelicos prophets in the vault.
He has his normal attributes of
crown and harp and does not
resemble the turbaned figure. Tur-
bans in this culture most often
indicate infidels.
50. Geiger, 96, figs. 46, 50. The
same trousers appear in a fresco of
about 1506 in Rome, Palazzo dei
Conservatori, by Jacopo Ripanda,
of a classical triumph.
xo+ r s +o r:tr s + + , +
51. The shaky basis for the
name Empedocles, almost always
assigned to this figure, is discussed
in Chapter 4, note 47.
52. The scenes around Lucan,
with combats, have commonly
been said to refer to his Pharsalia,
an epic on the civil war between
Caesar and Pompey. However, the
epic does not contain even one
description of a single combat, the
sole motif of the monochromes
here. The poem is all about mass
battles between large armies, sea
voyages, and long speeches. Fred-
erick Ahl (whose book has been
called the best general introduc-
tion to Lucan [Widdows, xxiv])
kindly informs me that nothing in
the monochromes fits the poem.
53. Italian Renaissance portraits
of Homer make a point of his
blindness, as later in Raphaels Par-
nassus, circa 1510, and earlier in
the portrait cycle of famous
authors in the Ducal Palace at
Urbino.
54. Pliny, Natural History,
16.35.
55. A small number of images
from the fifteenth century show
oak-crowned figures that when
they can be identified either cer-
tainly or very possibly signal civic
heroes. A genealogical manuscript
of the Visconti of 1403 shows
Aeneas in a circular frame of oak
leaves, along with the next three
generations of his successors (a dif-
ferent set from Virgils) (cf. Kirsch,
fig. 31). King Matthias Corvinus of
Hungary is so crowned in an Ital-
ian sculptors relief portrait
(Budapest, Hungarian National
Gallery). A famous drawing by
Leonardo (Windsor, Royal Library,
12495) shows a man in profile so
crowned, surrounded by carica-
tures of mockers, much like the
standard composition of the mock-
ing of Christ. The oak wreath is
presumably a clue to the baffling
identity of this work; it might rep-
resent Caesar and the conspirators.
In Goethes play Tasso, of the
1790s, a civic hero receives an oak
crown (1:4, 682), an indication that
this meaning was still readily
understood.
56. Recent studies of Judith
iconography have focused on
images showing her nude, with
reasonable proposals that her
seduction of Holofernes is being
seen as a sexual narrative. How-
ever, the idea that this mono-
chrome also makes a sexual
reference benefits unduly from
looking at this figure out of any
context. In the chapel, Judiths
many nude monochrome neigh-
bors in the wainscot are relevant to
her nudity and do not themselves
signal sexual reference. This is not
the earliest nude Judith, as has
been supposed. An earlier one, in
a rare North Italian manuscript of
the Biblia Pauperum (Wright,
910), shows her bathing and
treats her as a parallel to Christ
being baptized, and thus as an
emblem of purity.
57. In the Siena cycle, each
scene has a label beneath in gold-
leaf capital letters identifying the
event in Pope Piuss life. Scenes
with incidents before he became
pope call him either Aeneas
Sylvius, in the first two cases, or
Aeneas, in the other five. Thus
the name was conspicuously rein-
forced just at the time Signorelli
was working in Orvieto, in a fresco
cycle by a friend of his. Virgil
repeatedly dubs his hero Pious
Aeneas, and the choice by Aeneas
Sylvius Piccolomini of the papal
name Pius, when he was elected,
makes that classical reference. It is
not surprising that around the year
1500 the aristocratic Pio family
named a son Enea (Bandello, 518).
58. Gilbert, in Testa 1996,
30719. The proposal that Alberi
provided the iconographic scheme
for the Orvieto Last Judgment has
been backed up by statements that
he lived in Orvieto and was a
humanist, but there is no evidence
supporting those statements.
59. Clementini, 458.
60. A drawing by Signorelli in
the Uffizi prepares the motif of the
winners pinning the losers to the
ground. One pair at the left is a
close variant of the left pair in the
upper monochrome and is related
to a second pair to the right.
Berenson, 330, observed the con-
nection, if only as one of several
suggestions and with a slip of the
pen saying Lucian. Later com-
mentators failed to note this, and
in general it has been held that no
surviving drawings by Signorelli
prepare the fresco cycle. However,
the good study by Van Cleave, in
Testa 1996, 24151, has changed
the situation.
61. See Chapter 5, note 52.
62. The postulate being
invoked concerns the most effec-
tive way to learn what text was
used for the image here. Our usual
way is to try to identify the image
in a reasonable way (in this case
Ino) and then to locate its text,
commonly in the best-known
account of the story. But that is
fallacious because it is the opposite
of the procedure used at the origi-
+ xo+ r s +o r:tr s + , +
nal time, which arrived at the
image at the end. The beginning
was to find a story that suited the
scheme (in this case, classical visits
to the underworld). If Ino looked
good, he would next check the
most helpful account of her story.
It might well not be the most
famous, Ovids brief allusion, as it
was not for Proserpina. One
would tend to go, as in that case,
to a work fully devoted to the
theme. Of course, the wider
awareness of more classical authors
in that period is relevant too.
63. See Chapter 5, note 16, and
related text. The pose of the man
on tiptoe raising his hammer to kill
Parenzo was recycled in a number
of Signorellis works from early in
his career, usually flagellations. A
splendid nude life drawing at the
Louvre devoted to it illustrates the
artists effective fascination with
figures in tension, expanded in the
scene of the damned to an entire
event.
64. They differ from predellas
in being on the same level as the
standing saints, while around the
corner from them on the side walls
of the niche chapel. They share
the level of the other narrative
monochromes in the large chapel,
thus again insisting on design
unity.
65. If water was shown, it
would indicate a reference to
Ovid, because Statius does not
mention it. The eighteenth-cen-
tury description, without water,
would thus imply a citation of Sta-
tius only, while the analogue with
Faustinos death would suggest
that the iconographic planner was
aware of Ovid too, as he surely
was. This matter must remain
open.
66. Testa and Davanzo, in Testa
1996, illustration on p. 49.
67. See above, Chapter 5, note
53, for discussion.
68. The reproduction of this
circular portrait in Gilbert 1996,
314, is misleadingly printed; it
shows the head in a vertical posi-
tion but should have it leaning
down. It is correct in Riess, fig. 59.
69. Hind, 2:119, no. 29.
70. Hind, 2:131, no. 87.
71. See Chapter 5, note 40.
72. Signorellis absence from
Orvieto for a good part of 1502 is
often noted, most recently by
Kanter, 122, who names the
period from February to June.
Kanter rightly offers the authority
of Mancini, the leading scholar on
Signorelli documents, but instead
of citing his page 144 (which
instead concerns 1504) he should
have cited pages 13437, and
added the time up to August 1 as
shown there. These documents
place the artist in Cortona but
only record him on a few specific
days, and so allow for other local
trips.
73. Filippino at the time had far
greater career success. He had just
finished conspicuous large chapel
projects both in Rome and in Flo-
rence, cities where Signorelli had
produced only smaller works, and
that years earlier. It is reasonable to
suggest that Filippino borrowed
from Signorelli the bat-winged
demon, a Signorelli specialty, for a
drawing (Goldner and Bambach,
94n). Its closest analogue by Sig-
norelli is perhaps the green one in
the Minos scene.
74. Geiger, 9497, identified
this source in Summa contra Gen-
tiles, 4.126.
75. This is true both of texts and
images in this culture and of later
descriptions of them, accurate or
inaccurate. Fra Angelicos work-
shop produced a triumph of
Aquinas over heretics, identified in
inscriptions as William, Averroes,
and Sabellius (repr. Schottmuller,
fig. 137). The three are visually
derived from the similar group in
Thomass triumph in the Spanish
Chapel in Santa Maria Novella,
Florence, of 1365. These are not
labeled, but Vasaris identification
of them as Arius, Averroes, and
Sabellius is generally accepted
(Offner and Steinweg, 29). Else-
where Vasari wrongly says Sabel-
lius, Arius, and Averroes appear in
the similar scene of an altarpiece at
Santa Caterina, Pisa. In fact it
shows Averroes only (Vasari 1967,
2:226). Earlier, Saint Bernard had
contrasted the anonymous heresies
of his time with those of the past
named for Mani, Sabellius, and
Arius (cited by Lambert, 55). A ser-
mon to a major church assembly in
Rome in 1512 cites Arius, Sabel-
lius, and Photius (Olin, 51). A
search for a Sabellius alone has pro-
duced none, unless Signorellis head
is such.
76. The largest-scale such pair,
in a major location yet commonly
overlooked today, is among the
frescoes in the vault of Orsan-
michele, Florence, about 1400
(Gilbert 1994, figs. 12a, b). The
pair in Michelangelos Sistine vault
continues the tradition. In the
1490s Ercole deRoberti had
shown them in a lost altarpiece in
xo+ r s +o r:tr s + + o +
Ferrara (copy at Palazzo Venezia,
Rome).
77. Antal, 7173.
78. Signorelli himself painted just
such a figure of Magdalene in the
predella of his Siena altarpiece noted
earlier. Though understandably
called striding, she is between
other immobile figures, and so must
be likewise. (The panel is in the
Maxwell Collection, Glasgow.) The
group of sculptures in the round of
a Mourning over Christ, of the
1480s, by Niccol dellArca, at
Santa Maria della Vita, Bologna,
includes another such figure. The
statues have several times been
shifted from their original positions
in questionable ways, one of which
made a figure seem to run. That
Magdalene plainly does not is a
striking token of the situation dis-
cussed.
79. The author introduces both
stories as cases of lust in powerful
men leading to revolutions against
them.
80. Examples are in cassoni pre-
sented in the corpus of such works
by Schubring, nos. 78 and 138,
and a panel by Brescianino in
Siena (Torriti, 2:190).
81. Menest, 8889.
82. P. O. Kristeller, 223.
83. An English translation is in
Jed, 14952.
84. Plutarch 1.207. This is in
the Life of Poplicola, Brutuss col-
league as consul.
85. Boccaccio, Comedia della
ninfe fiorentine, 36, and Filicolo,
2.17.
86. Brown, 291; Machiavelli,
Discourses on Livy, 2:16. This is one
of the rare points that Machiavelli
actually bases on Livys text;
another refers to the story of Vir-
ginia (2.39).
87. One other motif in the
chapel not mentioned, a very small
one, in the inner bay, is the egg
painted as if suspended from the
vault, over the central window.
The large literature on the motif in
the period barely mentions this
example. The fullest survey is by
Gilbert 1974. There is little to say
whether this egg is a religious sym-
bol (the majority view about such
eggs among current historians) or
exemplifies the practice of hanging
ostrich eggs in churches to draw
curious visitors (the only raison
dtre offered in the period). Its
presence in a rare chapel with no
dedication might favor the latter
view.
88. Unpublished document,
from the Ms. Rif. 14841526, carta
367367v, transcribed in the dis-
sertation of McLellan, doc. 360.
89. Printed by Ceccarelli,
154ff., in the sixteenth century,
more recently cited only by
McLellan, 15.
90. McLellan, doc. 409, from
the Ms. Mem. 15001523, carta
52.
91. McLellan, doc. 408, unpub-
lished, from the Ms. Cam.
150116, carta 154.
92. Transcribed by Perali, 123.
The writer offers no basis for his
statement that the widow set up the
plaque, and it is unusual that the
text does not identify the person
doing so. However, the wording
shows that this occurred after his
death but not long after, indicating
that either she or another immedi-
ate heir was responsible.
93. This chapel, treated in a con-
fused way earlier, has now been dis-
cussed with clarity by Testa, in
Testa 1996, 27375. The committee
did not act as its patron for orna-
ment, but sold it to others, who
gave Signorelli a separate commis-
sion to paint it. Later it was resold,
and the work by Signorelli was
removed and partly destroyed.
94. This might seem to invali-
date several earlier rejections in
this study of proposed identifica-
tions on the basis that they do not
relate to the Last Judgment theme.
A response would be that these
other proposals do not show, as
the civic case does, affirmative evi-
dence such as separate patronage,
coats of arms, the accumulation of
images with the same theme, and
the grouping in one part of the
chapel.
95. Gilbert 1988, 13638.
Envoi
1. Gilbert 1986, 11213.
2. Sacchetti Sassetti, figs. 1326.
3. Heikamp, 54.
4. Paleotti, in Barocchi,
2:42552, 3045.
5. Berthold, nos. 24751.
6. H. Cotter, exhibition review,
New York Times, October 21,
1997.
7. E. M. Forster, A Room with a
View, first published 1908. In chap-
ter 10, the first meeting of two
main characters, in an art museum,
is reported: They were admiring
Luca Signorelli. In chapter 12, one
of the same characters goes swim-
ming with two other men, evi-
dently nude, with vigorous athletic
play, during which he refers back
to the meeting at the museum. The
swimming scene is preceded by talk
of the importance of mens bodies.
Here the hypothesis is that the
+ o xo+ r s +o r:tr s + + +
author, a closeted homosexual,
chose to use Signorellis name
because he associated the athletic
energy of the naked men with the
Orvieto murals. The book has
many other allusions to Italian
artists in fashion at the time. A
precedent and perhaps a model for
Forster is the Victorian literary man
John Addington Symonds. His
Memoirs (published only in 1984)
focus, uniquely for their era, on his
effort to analyze his own homosex-
uality, specifically manifested in his
visual obsession with beautiful male
bodies. His biography of Michelan-
gelo (1892) includes a surprising
seven-page excursus on the Sig-
norelli chapel fresco cycle, a
cadenza emphasizing naked forms
treated with audacious freedom
and the muscular energy of brutal
life (pp. 15764 in the 1936
reprint).
8. Cadmus, in a letter to the
author, calls Signorelli better than
Michelangelo. It is worth noting
that both he and Forster seem to
overlook the female nudes promi-
nent in Signorelli.
9. Another modern approach to
Signorelli favors a connection
between him and the apocalyptic.
This almost standard tie-in may be
exemplified by remarks by a histo-
rian of Renaissance painting, in
1998, to the effect that in the
chapel apocalyptic imagery covers
the walls and ceiling. This
approach, briefly cited at relevant
points above, is here relegated to a
note because it is entirely inaccu-
rate. It is a tribute both to the
power of new age interests in
current culture and to the power
of Signorellis art.
10. G. Della Valle 1791.
11. Frster, 1:13940.
12. Bertorello, in Testa 1996,
352.
13. Extrapolating still further,
one could place the project in a
general Renaissance context of
assigning high value to the physi-
cal. It is evocatively illustrated by
Angelicos concern to assign
heaven to a place with a ground,
and a further stage is evoked by
the tendency, shared by Signorelli
with others, in a departure from
Angelico, to evade the representa-
tion of hell.
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+ , n i n i i otr:r n.
i xir x
Abruzzi, Last Judgment in Loreto
Aprutino, 47, 81, 169 n. 66
Achilles, 106, 108
Aeneas, 93, 9798, 11112, 143, 184
n. 57
Aeneid. See Virgil
Alba Longa, 143
Alberi, Archdeacon, 73, 112, 144, 179
n. 85
Alberti, Leandro, 11
Alexander VI, Pope, 6667, 163 n. 28
Ambrose, Saint, 175 n. 23
Ammanati, Cardinal, tomb of, 65, 73,
90
Amphiarios, 98
Andrea Pisano, 24
Andromeda, 10910
Angelico, Fra Giovanni de Fiesole, 51,
76, 111, 121, 137
fame of, 70, 159
frescoes at San Marco, Florence,
27, 53
Last Judgment panels
Berlin, 3334, 4850, 8788
Florence benchback, 3334, 41,
43, 45, 49, 61, 73, 87
Florence silver cupboard, 4748
Rome, 5556
in Orvieto
contract, 2526
drawing, xviii, 30, 48, 54. See
also gavantone
hired, 2425
Judging Christ, 30, 3233, 37, 39
leaves Orvieto, 56, 58, 60, 62
portrait of, by Gozzoli, 52, 136
portrait of, by Signorelli, 51, 135
Prophets, 33, 37
scheme, 44, 49, 51, 54, 76, 115,
117
work, xi, xviii
angry, circle of, in Inferno, 110
Annius of Viterbo, 113
Annunciation, theme of paintings, 58,
104
Antichrist legend, xvi, 12932, 149
Antonino, Saint, 62
Apelles, 14749
apocalyptic ideas, 89, 132, 138, 168
n. 57, 175 n. 36
Apollinarius, 139
Apollodorus, 108
Apostles, 74
Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 3, 12, 62,
14950, 162 n. 7
Arcas, 104
archangels, 7778
Aretine ware, 163 n. 24
Aretino, Pietro, 182 n. 31
Aristotle, 12, 13
Arius, 129, 150, 185 n. 75
Ascension of Christ, 56
Assumption of the Virgin, 1619, 167
n. 23
Augustine, Saint, 2, 29, 81, 83, 134,
149, 180 n. 7, 183 n. 40
Averros, 185 n. 75
Balkans, fresco cycles in, 1112
Bardi, Roberto de, 177 n. 65
Barna, 35
Bartolommeo, Fra, 138, 176 n. 40,
183 n. 45
Beccafumi, 153
Beckmann, Max, 160
Benton, Thomas, 128, 160
Berenson, Bernard, 52
Bernard, Saint, 74
Bernardino, Saint, 62
Bersuire, Pierre, 110
Bertoldo di Giovanni, 65, 8586, 112
Beaune, 51
Biblia Pauperum, 56, 184 n. 56
Boccaccio, Giovanni, 108, 153, 186
n. 85
Bologna
Church of Santa Maria della Vita,
186. n. 78
San Petronio, 90
Bolsena
Miracle of, 23, 4
fresco of, 12627
relic, 14
Bonaiuti, Andrea, 47, 55
Boniface VIII, Pope, 5
Books of Hours, 90
Borgia family, 66, 6889
Cesare, 6769, 81, 183 n. 47
Bosch, Hieronymus, 80, 81
Bosnia, 128
Botticelli, Sandro, 70, 72, 15152, 154
Bramante, Donato, 132
Brizio, Saint
fresco of, 7677, 125
name assigned to Cappella Nuova,
18, 165 n. 65
Brunacci, Don Francesco, 2324
Brunelleschi, Filippo, 85
Bruni, Leonardo, 11112
Brutus, first consul of Rome, 94,
15254
Byrd, Robert, 153
Cadmus, Paul, 158, 187 n. 8
Cadmus of Thebes, 14445, 158, 160
Calisto, 104
cartaro, 30, 37
Castor and Pollux, 98
Cathari, 2, 12, 12728, 134, 182 n. 33
Cathedral of Orvieto, xviii, 1, 3
apse, 5, 14, 15, 27, 29
Bishop, 63
Cappella Nuova, passim from 15
Gilbert.Index 10/23/02 3:08 PM Page 195
altar, 16, 23, 24
frescoes, passim: archangels,
7778; Bishop Saints, 76;
conservation, xviii, 174
n. 20; dating of completion,
75, 174 n. 16; David and
Judith, 14243, 150; finds
after conservation, xix;
frames, 3536, 38, 5657,
142, 160; outer vault, 118;
sequence of work, 75, 173
n. 14; technique, 132, 183
n. 47; vault, xv, xvii, 32, 57,
71, 72, 75, 173 n. 7; wainscot
area, xviii, 52, 54, 75,
90111, 141, 146
little chapels inside it, 20, 59,
75, 123
Madonna of San Brizio, 18
no dedication, 18
scaffolding, 62
scenes of frescoes: Ascent of the
Blessed, 79; Assembly of the
Blessed, xvi, 79, 83, 121,
136; Assembly of the
Damned, xv, 85, 122;
Antichrist, xiii, xv, 118,
12021, 13235, 13738,
14043; Descent of the
Damned, 8789; of entrance
wall, 11819, 13741; Rais-
ing of the Dead, xv, xvii, 76,
11718, 12022, 145, 149,
159
tabernacle of the Assumption,
1618, 56, 7576
tabernacle of the Crucifix, 17
use of the term Chapel of the
Assumption, 1819
windows, 16, 17, 19, 36, 75,
174 n. 18
coat of arms, 58
committee, xi, 71, 117, 119
construction, 4-5, 13
faade, 7, 163 n. 24
mosaics, 7, 9, 29
sculpture, 7, 9, 1112, 28, 51,
65, 121, 135; of pagan fig-
ures, 13; of Tree of Jesse, 11,
13; early comments on 10,
11
name, 6, 165 n. 75
named chapels
of the Coronation of the Virgin,
16, 17
of the Magdalene, 20, 123, 155,
186 n. 93
of the Monaldeschi, 20
of the Reliquary, 1516, 2021,
27, 91
reliquary, 3, 14, 15
sacristy, 16
semicircular chapels, 57
transeptal bays, 57, 1516
Cerberus, 93
Ceres, 9394
Czanne, Paul, 158, 160
Chantilly, Muse Cond, 38, 4849,
52, 136
Charity and Envy, allegories of, 101,
103
Charon, 44, 8788, 105, 123, 151
Chartres, 160
Chastity and Lust, allegories of, 1034,
108
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 94
Cicero, 83, 142, 147, 149, 151
Cimabue, 27
Citt di Castello, 70
Claudian, 9395, 9798, 100, 104,
112, 146
Clementini, Girolamo, 1045,
15859, 176 n. 53
Cleopatra, 106
coats of arms, 58, 154
Coca, Bishop, 40
Cologne, cathedral of, 165 n. 79
Colonna family, 65
Condivi, Ascanio, 123
confessors, category of saints, 74
Corbara, Count, 69
Corinthians, First Letter to, 41
Coronation of the Virgin, 16, 56
Corpus Christi, feast of, 3, 14, 126,
162 n. 9
Cortese, Cristoforo, 81
Cortesi, Paolo, 113, 179 n. 98
Cortona, 1, 71, 85, 113, 126
Costanzo, Saint, 7677
Cupid, 103
Daniel, Book of, 131, 180 n. 7
Dante, 89, 97, 129
in Last Judgment, 4445, 53, 88
lines on allegory, 101, 111
portraits of, 54, 59, 87, 9495, 112
scenes from Divine Comedy illus-
trated, 52, 87, 9496, 99104,
10511
David, Jacques-Louis, 153
David, King, 15254, 183 n. 49
Della Valle, Guglielmo, 15859
designum, 7172, 75, 173 n. 5
Diana, 93, 1034
Dido, 106, 178 n. 74
Dies Irae, 41, 183 n. 49
Dis, city of, 11011, 128
disegno. See designum
doctors of the church, category of
saints, 7274
Dominic, Saint, 46
Dominicans, 2, 72, 162 n. 7
Donatello, 85, 150
Dresden, gallery in, 38, 49
Duccio di Buoninsegna, 14, 15
Drer, Albrecht, 132
Elice, 104
Elijah. See Enoch and Elijah
Empedocles, 176 n. 47, 184 n. 51
Enoch, Book of, 78, 114, 175 n. 22
Enoch and Elijah, 83, 129, 132, 182
n. 30
Envy, allegory of, 176 n. 56
Erasmus, 83
Eritrean sibyl, 13, 83
Eurydice, 93
Ezekiel, Book of, 123, 128
Faith, allegory of, 102, 103, 177 n. 59
Farnese family
Bishop Guido, 67
Cardinal, later Pope Paul III,
6768, 81, 11213, 115, 122
family castle of, 113
frescoes of family history, 171 n. 34
Luigi, 67
Pietro, Captain, 67
Faustino, Saint, 59, 12326, 14546, 155
Fiani, Crisostimo, 69, 71, 172 n. 45
Ficino, Marsilio, 106, 152
Filippeschi family, 96
Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, 30
Florence
cathedral of, 9, 158
churches
Baptistery, 4143, 45, 54, 61,
168 n. 59
+ , o i xir x
Cathedral of Orvieto (contd)
Carmine, 13334
Orsanmichele, 185 n. 76
San Miniato, 7, 15
Santa Croce, 28
Santa Maria degli Angeli; 4647
Santa Maria Novella, Spanish
chapel, 27, 47, 55, 169 n. 68
Strozzi chapel (painted by Filip-
pino Lippi), 133, 139, 149
Strozzi chapel (painted by
Nardo), 28, 43, 168 n. 58,
182 n. 21
chapel of the Bargello, 44
Medici chapel, 52
Medici court, 11314
Palazzo Vecchio, 94
Wool Guild Hall, 153
Forster, E. M., 158, 186 n. 7
Francesco di Giorgio, 70, 172 n. 50,
182 n. 35
Francesco di Urbano da Cortona, 71
Franci, Nicola, 135
Francis, Saint, 46, 5354, 59
Freud, Sigmund, xiixiii, 158, 161 nn.
5, 6
Fulgentius, 107
Furies, 110, 128
Gabriel, archangel, 7778
gavantone, 30, 3738, 40, 4952, 71,
75, 91, 100, 117, 137, 167 n. 45
Genga, Girolamo, 147
Genoa, 66
Gentile da Fabriano, 11, 24, 56, 63
Ghiberti, Lorenzo, 183 n. 41
Ghirlandaio, Domenico, 70, 72, 81,
183 nn. 41, 43
Ghisi, Giorgio, 181 n. 12
Giotto di Bondone
portrait by Gozzoli, 53, 176 n. 45
reference to in Orvieto wainscot,
92, 100101
self-portrait, 51, 135
works
Florence, Last Judgment, 44, 53,
92
Padua, Last Judgment, 27,
4244, 54, 56, 61, 80, 139,
183 n. 48
Rome, Navicella, 7, 9, 24, 27
Giovanni da Udine, 58
Giovanni di Paolo, 83
gluttonous, circle of , in Inferno, 108
Golden Legend, 12931, 13739
Gozzoli, Benozzo
assistant of Angelico, 25
drawings, 3839, 52, 13637, 169
n. 72
frescoes
in Florence, 52
in Montefalco, 53, 9192, 176
n. 45
return to Orvieto, 5859, 100
self-portrait, 137
Grimani, Cardinal, 81, 115, 122
grotesque, technical term, 91, 144
Gualtieri family, 20
Helen of Troy, 106
Hercules, 93, 9798, 10612
heresy, 2, 3, 1213, 12829, 14849,
163 n. 9
Homer, 13, 108, 112, 142, 147, 151,
184 n. 53
Hope, allegory of, 101
humanism, 13, 78, 83, 94, 112
Iacomo di Cartari, 37
Innocent III, Pope, 2
Innocent VIII, Pope, 66, 101, 128
Ino, 144, 146
Iovanni Antonio, 25
Isabella dEste, 63
Jacopo de Poli, 25
John the Baptist, 33, 35, 73, 167 n. 33
John the Evangelist, 182 n. 37
Josaphat, valley of, 47, 81, 85, 87
Jove, 104
Judith, 143, 14748, 152, 157, 184
n. 56
Julius II, Pope, 66, 127
Juno, 104
Klosterneuburg altarpiece, 181 n. 8
Kyrie eleison, 74
Laetus, Pomponius, 113, 129
Landino, Cristoforo, 108, 11112, 115
Last Judgment
in Balkan frescoes, 13
in Biblia Pauperum, 56
denied by Cathari, 62, 129, 132
in France, 170 n. 1
in medals, 171 n. 22
in Orvieto, xii, 27, 61, 73
plays of, 62, 129, 132
related to death of individual, 90
theme of visual images, 106 n. 22
in tombs, 65
Leonardo da Vinci, 184 n. 55
Leo X, Pope, 12627
Limbourg brothers, 12122
Lippi, Filippino, 70, 72, 81, 91, 133,
139, 14749, 151, 183 n. 46,
185 n. 73
Lippi, Fra Filippo, 27, 3536
Litany, 74
Livy, 152
Lochner, Stefan, 80, 121
Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, 14, 176 n. 44
Loreto, 70
Lucan, 142, 144, 184 n. 52
Lucca, San Frediano, 7
Lucretia, 15154
Lucretius, 105
Luke, Gospel of, 13839, 146
lustful, circle of, in Inferno, 1069,
128
Machiavelli, Niccolo, 153, 186 n. 86
Maitani, Lorenzo, 51, 137, 169 n. 62,
183 nn. 41, 43
Malleus Maleficarum, 182 n. 33
Mancinelli, Antonio, 180 n. 99
Manichaeans, 2, 12628, 139
Mariotto di Urbano da Cortona, 71
Martin IV, Pope, 5
Martin V, Pope, 24, 65
martyrs, category of saints, 7374
Mary Magdalene, Saint, 151, 186
n. 78
Masaccio, 27
Masolino, 24, 166 n. 7, 167 n. 40
Matthew, Gospel of, 41
Matthias Corvinus, 184 n. 55
Mauropous, John, 12
Medici family
Filippo de, 65
Giovanni de (Leo X), 113
Lorenzo de, xii, 70, 86, 11214,
172 n. 49, 179 n. 97
Melozzo da Forl, 183 n. 46
Memling, Hans, 80, 121
Michael, archangel, 77, 129, 132, 147
Michelangelo
admiration for Signorelli, xii, 89,
157
self-portrait, 135
i xir x + , ;
works, 150, 183 n. 42
Battle of Centaurs, 107, 113
David and Judith, 186 n. 76
Last Judgment, 115, 123
tomb of Julius II, 65, 70, 72
Michelotti, Archdeacon, 23
Minerva, 93, 94, 110
Minos, 8788, 99, 1056, 110, 123,
157
Monaldeschi family, 12, 14, 16, 20,
63, 67, 96, 172 n. 46
Achille, 15455
Camilla, 65
Gentile and Arrigo di Pietroanto-
nio, 23, 58, 155
Gentile di Luca, 64
Giovanna, 63, 154, 156
Paolopietro, 63, 65
Pietroantonio, 63, 65, 15455
Montagues and Capulets, 96
Montefalco, fresco cycle, 53, 54, 59
Monte Oliveto, abbey of, 70, 91, 172
n. 52
Naples, 20
Nardo di Cione, frescoes, 28, 4346,
5253, 61, 75, 79, 8788, 91,
111
Nazarenes, 159
Neptune, 1089
New Jerusalem, 47
Niccol Rosex da Modena, 14748,
157
Nicholas IV, Pope, 5, 13, 14
Nicholas V, Pope, 128
nudity, 80, 107, 175 n. 23, 178 n. 69
Nrnberg chronicle, 132
Ochsenbrunner, Thomas, 153
Oedipus, 145
Oionos, 108
Orcagna, 24, 28
Orpheus, 93, 98, 100, 108, 112, 158
Orsini family, 113
Cardinal, 67
librarian, 179 n. 98
Orvieto, 111
abbey of Santa Trinit, 81
heretics, 2
panorama of, 14
social history, xvii, 12, 158
visits to, 6768, 157
Overbeck, Johann Friedrich, 159
Ovid, 93, 94, 104, 1089, 144
Paccagnino, Angelo, 83
Padua, 153
Paleotti, Gabriele, 158
Paolo and Francesca, 106
paper prices, 168 n. 45
Parenzo, San Pietro, 2, 182 n. 20
chapel of, 59, 123
martyrdom of, 124, 126, 128, 145
Pastura, 69
patriarchs, category of holy men, 41, 44
in Last Judgment, 33, 46, 7273
Paul II, Pope, xviii, 65, 112
medal of, 65
tomb of, 65, 73, 80, 90, 12829, 136
Paul III, Pope, xviii, 123. See also
Farnese, Cardinal
Paul, Saint, 128
Pegasus, 111, 179 n. 81
Pentecost, 56
Pericope of Henry II, 181 n. 8
Perseus, myth of, 10911
Perugia, 1, 4, 70, 135
Perugino, Pietro Vannucci, 26, 59, 63,
66, 6870, 91, 114, 135
Petrarch, portrait of, 53, 83, 176 n. 45
Phanuel, angel, 78
Phineus, 109
Piccolomini clan, 73. See also Pius II
Jacopo, 65
Pico della Mirandola, 78, 114
Piermatteo dAmelia, 62
Piero della Francesca, frescoes of, 27
Pietro di Nicola, 32, 56, 58, 59, 118,
123, 145, 170 n. 87
Pietro Parenzo. See Parenzo, San
Pietro
Pinturicchio, Bernardo, 63, 72, 91,
135, 144, 157
Pisa, 1, 4
Campo Santo frescoes, 27, 28, 43,
61
Pisanello, Antonio, 24
Pius II, Pope, xviii, 10, 65, 128
frescoes of his life, 91, 144, 157,
184 n. 57
Pius III, Pope, 144
Plato, 12, 13, 49, 158
Pliny the Elder, 142
Plutarch, 12, 13, 108, 153
Pluto and Proserpina, 93, 1089
Poliziano, Angelo, 107, 113, 114
Pollaiuolo, Antonio, 65, 86, 101
Pollock, Jackson, 158
Pride and Humility, in Dante, 100, 101
prophets, category of holy men, 33,
44, 73, 167 n. 38
Proserpina, 97, 100
Purgatory
absent in Last Judgment, 180
n. 100
doctrine rejected by heretics, 128
Saint Patricks, 180 n. 100
images in the Capella Nuova of,
90100
Raphael, archangel, 78
Raphael (painter), 2, 58, 75, 159, 168
n. 51
visit to Orvieto, 136, 157
works
allegories of virtues, 102, 157
drawings after Signorelli, 136,
157
Mass of Bolsena, 126
Massacre of the Innocents, 150
Parnassus, 184 n. 53
self-portrait, 13536
Ravenna, Last Judgment fresco, 129
Revelation, as a text for Last Judgment,
47. See also apocalyptic ideas
Rieti, Last Judgment mural, 158
Ripanda, Jacopo, 153, 184 n. 50
Rizzi, Alfonso, 128
Roberti, Ercole de, 187 n. 76
Rohan hours, 83, 90
Romania, church frescoes, 13
Rome, 1, 2, 81
Arch of Constantine, 139
Lateran Palace, 6, 7
Sant Agostino, 65
Santa Maria Maggiore, 57, 13
Santa Maria sopra Minerva, 139,
147, 149, 182 n. 21
Saint Peters, 7, 15, 128
Rovere families, 65, 66
Cardinal. See Julius II, Pope
Giorgio, Bishop, 6567, 112
Rustici, Marco, 94
Sabellius, 129, 149, 185 n. 75
Salutati, Coluccio, 94, 98, 100, 104,
11112, 115, 142, 146
Declamatio Lucretiae, 152
+ , i xir x
Michelangelo (contd)
San Gimignano, Collegiata, frescoes,
35, 175 n. 31
sarcophagi, Roman, 38, 85
Sarto, Andrea del, 183 n. 41
Satan, image of in Last Judgment, 41
Savonarola, Girolamo, 8990
Scala, Bartolommeo, 153
self-portraits, 51, 135, 169 n. 62, 170
n. 73, 183 nn. 41, 46
Severo and Martirio, saints, abbey of,
65
sibyl
Cumaean, 94
Eritrean, 13, 83
Siena, 1, 4, 14
cathedral, 9, 13
loggia, 153
work by Signorelli, 6990
Signorelli, Luca, passim
anticipations in Orvieto of his
work there, 29, 43, 45, 49
begins work, 30, 71
contracts,71, 75, 11720
Court of Pan, xii, 70, 11314
drawings, 178 nn. 74, 80, 182
n. 23, 184 n. 60, 185 n. 63
hired, 69, 70
inspects drawing for Cappella
Nuova frescoes, 26
Medici Madonna, 70, 113
Monte Oliveto frescoes, 70, 91
Piet altarpiece, 124
praised by Vasari, xi
self-portrait, 51, 135, 148
tile, 13536
travel, 185 n. 72
Vitelli portrait, 135
Silvius Aeneas, king, 14344
Simon Magus, 134, 147, 183 n. 39
Sistine chapel, frescoes, 11819, 135
Sixtus IV, Pope, 65
breve, 165 n. 75, 171 n. 27
tomb of, 101
skeletons, 12223, 128
Sodoma, 135, 148
Statius, 1046, 145, 177 n. 65
stories in painting defined, 71, 173
n. 2
Tarquin, 152
Te Deum, 74
Terni, Last Judgment fresco, 180
n. 100
Thebes, 145
Theodore psalter, 12
theologians of Orvieto, advice of, 119
Theseus, 93, 9798, 11011
Tiresias, 145
Titian, 104, 154
Todi, 1
fresco of Last Judgment, 180 n. 100
tombs, in Last Judgment, 168 n. 56
Torcello, Last Judment mosaic, 41
Torresani brothers, 158
transubstantiation, doctrine of, 3
Traversari, Ambrogio, 47, 61
Tree of Jesse, 13
Trs Riches Heures, 85, 12122
Tristan, 106
Tundal, 85
Tuscania, fresco, 27
Ugolino, enamelist, 14
Urban IV, Pope, 2, 3, 5, 12, 14
Urbano da Cortona, 71
Uriel, archangel, 78
Valla, Lorenzo, 83
van der Weyden, Rogier, 51, 80, 83,
121
van Eyck, Jan, 81, 121
Vasari, Giorgio, xi, xii, 113, 135,
15760
Vatican, frescoes
in Chapel of Nicolas V, 27
in Raphael Stanze, 12627, 135
Venice
church of Gesuiti, 78
church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, 15
Venus, 93, 1034
Villani, Filippo, 44, 94, 100
Virgil
Aeneid, 11, 93, 95, 100, 104, 143
as allegorical poet, 11112
Eclogues, 113
portrait of, 92, 146
as traveler in Dantes text, 110
Virginia, 15152
virgins, category of saints, 73, 74
Vitelli, Vitelozzo, 135
Viterbo, 12, 4
Volterra, 1, 70
Waldensians, 12728
Well of Saint Patrick, 172 n. 40, 180
n. 100
William of Moerbeke, 12
wreaths, laurel and oak, 97, 14243,
177 n. 59, 184 n. 55
Zuccari, Federico, 183 n. 41
i xir x + , ,
: o o nov r r: :xtr i i co :xi s i txor r i i i s :v + nr r xi or + nr vor i i
rno+otr:rn crrii +s
Alinari; Anderson; Archivio Fotografico della
Fabbrica di S. Pietro; Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana;
Brogi; Gemaeldegalerie, Berlin; Giraudon; Istituto
Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione, Rome;
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Muse
Cond, Chantilly; Musei Vaticani; Raffaelli e Armoni,
Orvieto; Reunion des Muses Nationaux, Paris;
Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici, Florence;
Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici, Parugia; Joseph
Szaszfai; Witt Library, London.

How Fra Angelico and Signorelli Saw The End of The World

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